Record rainfall in parts of central and southern Saskatchewanhas put a damper on construction of the $3 billion, 1.325 Bcf/dAlliance Pipeline, but for the time being sponsors are standing bytheir projected in-service date, sort of.

One spokesman said the pipeline is on track to meet its Oct. 1deadline. Another, however, claimed Alliance officials “never saidOct. 1” was the drop-dead target. He said the massive gas projectwould be in service “sometime in October.”

“We have just come through 12 days of very wet weather inSaskatchewan where we have two crews working. They were shut downfor 10 days and just [last Wednesday] they were able to get backout into the field,” said Jay Godfrey, Alliance spokesman. “That’sthe largest portion of construction that we have left to go.Unfortunately, Mother Nature has started throwing spitballs at us,and there’s not a lot you can do when Mother Nature throws you aspitball. But we still expect to be in service in October.”

The 2,130-mile pipeline system will transport natural gas fromnortheastern British Columbia and northwestern Alberta to Chicagothrough a 36-inch diameter high-pressure line. There will be 14mainline compressor stations: seven in Canada and seven in the US.So far, the project is about 95% complete, according to pipelineofficials.

Alliance engineers are building the line in seven separatespreads. Starting in February they began purging air from certainsections by injecting gas through temporary connections withTransGas in Saskatchewan, Natural Gas Pipe Line in Illinois andother partners in Alberta and British Columbia.

“When October comes we won’t be in the position that we’ll haveto start filling the pipe. It essentially already is going to befull,” said Godfrey. Connections to 37 gas plants are complete.

“It’s obviously going to rain once or twice, and we had thatbuilt into the schedule,” said spokesman Jack Crawford, “but if itcontinues to rain we’ll have to look at [the date for service]. Atthe moment we are still on track for Oct.1. [Pushing it back intoOctober] may well happen. All of our plans still center around Oct.1.”

Despite the large amount of work that has been done already, thetwo spreads in southern Saskatchewan, one in North Dakota andanother in British Columbia still have to be built.

“The game plan is to be testing in late September at partcapacity,” said Crawford. “The game plan also includes that wewould buy and sell gas as a pipeline during the test period, buyingit in BC and Alberta and selling it in Chicago. Hopefully, we’ll beall checked out and ready so we can be at full capacity on Oct. 1.

“They are forecasting clear skies, warm weather and lightbreezes. I suppose the worst case scenario is – and what we’veactually discussed with our shippers – that if we do not make Oct.1 or 2, rather than just delay it a couple days, we will continueto test for something like two weeks, so we would start Oct. 15. Ifit continues to be delayed for whatever reason we would start Nov.1.”

Rocco Canonica

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