|
Published: 7/23/2008 | Updated: 1/30/2009
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued a notice to proceed that authorizes the start of mainline construction for the first portion of the Rockies Express East pipeline project.
The authorization covers Spread A-1, which includes Audrain and Pike counties in Missouri, and Pike and Scott counties in Illinois.
“We’ll begin construction activities to some extent this week,” project spokesman Allen Fore said. “Certainly the rains here will impact, to some extent, the start of construction, but with some good weather, we’ll be going here in a couple of days.”
The $5 billion REX-East project stretches 639 miles from Audrain County, Mo., through Illinois and Indiana into Monroe County, Ohio.
REX hopes to have construction completed in this area — and across a 444-mile stretch to Cincinnati — by the end of the year and have the entire pipeline in service in summer 2009.
One of the biggest challenges of the project will be crossing the Mississippi River. Plans call for a directional drill 60 to 80 feet beneath the bottom of the river to carve space for the pipeline, then the pipeline will cross over the top of the Sny Island Levee and Drainage District levee.
Fore was in Quincy on Tuesday to meet with Klingner and Associates, the Sny’s engineering firm, to discuss the Sny canal crossing, the approach to the river.
“They have approved,” Fore said. “That directional drill will begin (today) or the next day.”
Work will take place simultaneously on seven different “spreads,” or 60- to 70-mile sections of the line, with crews laying an estimated one mile of underground pipe a day. Building the pipeline will require up to 6,000 workers, with 1,500 to 2,000 in Illinois. A contractor yard in Bowling Green, Mo., is open and operational.
The project is the third leg of a larger pipeline project covering 1,663 miles from Colorado to Ohio to serve Upper Midwest and East Coast markets. The 42-inch diameter pipeline will transport more than 1.8 billion cubic feet a day of Rocky Mountain natural gas to other interstate natural gas pipelines.
REX-East initiated the FERC regulatory process in June 2006 and filed an application for approval of the REX-East portion in April 2007. FERC voted to authorize construction and operation of the pipeline in June to meet ever-rising demand for natural gas.
FERC’s notice to proceed “makes Illinois completely approved to construct the pipeline and all of the state of Missouri that remains,” Fore said.
The project is a development of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners; Sempra Pipelines and Storage, a unit of Sempra Energy; and ConocoPhillips.
— dhusar@whig.com/221-3379
|
