U.S. pipelines race out of mountains; into yards
Published Sunday November 30th, 2008
DENVER - In the push toward more energy independence, massive U.S. infrastructure projects that will help to deliver it have clashed with cherished rights of land ownership.
Proven natural gas reserves have jumped 10 of the last 11 years, according to the U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration and thousands of kilometres of new pipelines have snaked in every direction.
In just the last 10 years, more than 30,000 kilometres of new natural gas pipelines have been built and brought on line. Those pipelines can carry more than 97 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day.
The owners of property over which new pipelines are planned are concerned about leaks into water and soil, land damaged by construction, land lost to a right of way and in some cases loss of livelihood.
Those concerns are exemplified by what's happening to Betty Wahle's family vineyard in Yamhill, Ore.
Her land is actually ground zero for not one but two pipelines. The developers would dig up chunks of rich dirt and some vines that have been nurtured for more than three decades, she said.
Those vines, said Wahle, 68, would not be restored to their current state in her lifetime.
"It's just going to be devastating," she said.
On a steep hillside, the Wahle family planted their first vines in the 1970s on a 40-hectare plot.
Developers have proposed routes across the property for the 354-kilometre pipeline which would connect TransCanada's system in central Oregon with NW Natural's distribution system. It is pending U.S. government authorization.
Oregon Pipeline Co., which said it always tries to work closely with landowners, has proposed a 188-kilometre pipeline that also could cross the vineyard.
"They won't allow us to replant vines above the pipelines," she said.
"There's very little that you could actually do with this piece of property."
The bulk of the new natural gas supply is in the energy-rich Rockies and Texas. Producers are sinking traditional oil and gas wells and drilling into coal-bed methane reserves in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. In Texas, it's the Barnett Shale, a 15,538-square-kilometre bedrock region of natural gas and the Bossier Sands tight-gas formation.
Between 1998 and 2006, natural gas production in these two regions jumped 96 per cent and proved natural gas reserves climbed 127 per cent, government statistics show.
There are currently about 463,000 kilometres of gas pipelines with a capacity of 187 billion cubic feet a day.
From 2008 to 2010, about 200 projects have been proposed to add 16,254 more kilometres, according to the Energy Information Administration.
If all are finished, the U.S. natural gas capacity will jump by more than 38 per cent, the EIA said, at an overall cost of about $28 billion.
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