Pipeline & Gas Journal
January issue 2000:

August Deadline Within Site

Alliance Pipeline Finishes ‘99
On Schedule, Within Budget
by Jeff Share/Editor

There’s just nothing about the Alliance Pipeline project that isn’t absolutely huge.
First, look at the numbers. The $3 billion ($4.5 Canadian) project is the biggest non-recourse debt financed project in North American history, requiring the participation of more than 40 banks worldwide. The system will cover portions of three Canadian provinces and four states, consisting of 1,858 miles of mainline requiring more than 20 directionally drilled crossings, 434 miles of laterals, 14 mainline and eight lateral compressor stations and a major liquids processing plant near Chicago.

The pipeline will begin with a 42-inch header line for the laterals being built in northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia and will operate at about 1,000 psig. The mainline will comprise 36-inch pipe built to withstand a maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) of 1,740 psig. At its peak last fall, the project employed up to 7,000 workers, including 5,000 on pipeline construction, 1,000 at the Aux Sable liquids plant in Illinois and 1,000 on compressor stations and laterals. Ten mainline contractors are at work in addition to four different compressor contractors.
“It was going to cost a lot of money to hire a lot of folks to do this in a short time, and that was the decision we made,” explained Jay Godfrey, Alliance’s manager of communications.
But the bottom line is that the Alliance Pipeline is a crucial conduit for western Canadian natural gas producers who badly need to deliver their product into the Chicago area hub where it will interconnect with the North American pipeline grid. The 1.325 Bcf/d, combined with 700 MMcf/d recently brought onstream by the Northern Border expansion, is destined to spawn a series of pipeline projects that will keep contractors busy for the next several years.

Alliance Pipeline is a limited partnership of energy companies including The Coastal Corporation, Enbridge Inc., Fort Chicago Energy Partners LP, The Williams Companies, Inc. and Westcoast Energy Inc.

C.L. Williams, chief inspector of the Fairmount Station on Spread 3 in the hinterlands of upstate Minnesota, has worked on many pipeline projects but acknowledges that the biggest pipeline project since the landmark Trans-Alaskan Pipeline of the 1970s is truly the “big one.”
“I came to the Alliance project because it’s the largest project under construction,” he said. “Rodeo riders don’t want to ride the smallest bull. We all want to be on the big one and this one offered some interesting challenges because of the mechanized welding. They’ve spared no expense in personnel, time and money to do the things that are going to make a difference in how the pipeline is accepted in the community,” he said.

After three years of planning, which required thousands of permits from municipal, county, state, provincial and federal regulators and agencies on both sides of the border, along with right-of-way agreements with 5,500 landowners and tenants, work began Feb. 16 with the clearing of forested mainline and lateral right-of-ways in northwest Alberta and northeastern British Columbia.
The steel was made overseas, shipped to the U.S., and rolled at Napa Steel in Napa, CA and Berg Steel in Panama City, FL. It was coated with fusion-bond epoxy applied at the plants. On the Canadian side, steel was made both overseas and in Canada by IPSCO, which rolled all of the 36-inch Canadian mainline pipe at its Regina plant.

U.S. contractors began work on all of their spreads on May 17; two weeks later, their Canadian counterparts followed suit and construction also began on the 14 mainline compressor stations. During the first week of August, contractors completed onerous horizontal directional drilling crossings of the Mississippi River and of the Peace River in Canada.

By Nov. 30, Norm Gish, Alliance Pipeline President and CEO, declared that the 1999 construction program had been completed within budget and on schedule - despite some serious setbacks caused by extremely rainy conditions early in the construction season. Hours earlier, workers completed a historic weld at the Saskatchewan-North Dakota border that symbolized the linkage of the project on both sides of the border. He said 1,336 miles of mainline, representing 72 percent of the total, had been welded and installed.

“The successful achievement of all of our goals for this year means we are directly on track to meet our planned in-service date of Oct. 1, 2000 as scheduled,” Gish said. It seemed fitting that the symbolic jointure was held where it was because wet weather was a huge deterrent in the spring and early summer, especially in the upper region of Spread 1 in North Dakota and across the border in Saskatchewan where much of the construction was stalled.

On the U.S. side, 766 miles, or 86 percent, of the 888 miles of mainline have been completed. The rest will be installed this summer. In Canada, where most of the pipeline will actually be laid, 528 miles (70 percent) of the 758 miles of 36-inch mainline have been installed. The balance will be installed this winter and this summer. And 39 miles (18 percent) of the 212 miles of 42-inch Canadian mainline have been installed, with the rest excepted to be installed during the 1999-2000 winter construction program.

In addition, 60 miles (14 percent) of the 434 miles of the lateral system have been installed; another 222 miles are being installed this winter and the rest will be finished this summer.

In Canada
Construction in British Columbia and Alberta has moved forward this winter, including mainline work on Alberta’s upper northern portion known as the “Green Belt,” a heavily forested region comprised of land which requires the ground to be frozen solid before contractors can work on it with heavy machinery. In both Alberta and British Columbia, lateral construction has been proceeding. There will be no pipe installed in Saskatchewan this winter, but work will continue on compressor stations there as well as in Alberta.

Construction in Canada is directed by Singleton Associated Engineering, Calgary, and is divided into eight zones, moving from northeastern British Columbia to Saskatchewan’s border with North Dakota. As noted, it will consist of 212 miles of 42-inch and 758 miles of 36-inch diameter pipe. There will be 36 receipt points connecting with laterals totaling 434 miles, ranging in length from 0.2 to 96 miles and 4-24 inches in diameter. There will also be seven mainline compressor stations ranging from 31,000 to 40,000 hp, 120 miles apart. Here’s how it breaks down:

Zone 1 in the Dawson Creek/Aitken Creek area will include 150 miles in laterals with 8-24 inch pipe and five directional drill crossings. Waschuk Pipe Line Construction Ltd., Red Deer, Alberta is the mainline contractor.
Zone 2 in the Fox Creek/Gordondale area will consist of 178 miles of 42-inch mainline and 177 miles of 4-24 inch lateral. Waschuk and Marine Pipeline Construction of Canada, Nisku, Alberta are the mainline contractors.
Zone 3 in the Mayerthorpe/Fox
Creek/Edson area will have 34 miles of 42-inch pipe, 102 miles of 36-inch mainline pipe and 139 miles of 4-24 inch lateral. O.J. Pipelines, Nisku, is the mainline contractor.
Zone 4 in the Mundare/Mayerthorpe area includes 102 miles of 36-inch mainline. O.J. is also contractor here.
Zone 5 in the Provost/Vegreville area will have 137 miles of 36-inch mainline. Marine Pipeline is the contractor.
Zone 6 in the Kerrobert area will have 150 miles of 36-inch mainline. Marine is the contractor.
Zone 7 in the Loreburn area will have 88 miles of 36-inch mainline. Waschuk is the contractor.
Zone 8 in the Regina area will have 112 miles of 36-inch pipeline. O.J. Pipelines and Waschuk are the contractors.
Zone 9 in the Alameda area will connect to the U.S. border with 102 miles of 36-inch pipe. O.J. Pipelines is the contractor.

“We’re making good progress in Canada, but we had seven mainline contractors working in the United States over the summer and only had three in Canada, so it stands to reason we’d have more miles completed in the U.S. than in Canada,” Godfrey said. There was so much rain in the Saskatchewan area that one of the contractors had to briefly shut down, but that section has now been completed.

In the United States, the pipeline encompasses parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois and is divided into six large and one small mainline spreads where construction picked up rapidly after a soggy start, said Steve Dracos, vice president of Universal Ensco, general contractor for the U.S. portion.

In The United States
Houston-based Universal Ensco maintains resident construction supervisors on each spread who meet the contractors daily and then relay electronically their progress reports. Due to the weather, they fell behind by 20 days at one point, but thanks to the efficiency derived from mechanized welding and better weather, they were able to catch up by early fall.

The pipeline is being built through farmland and for much of the way parallels the Dome Pipeline, a liquids carrier. Dracos, Universal Ensco’s project director, said contractors found less rock than was anticipated. However, they did face extremely high water tables throughout the terrain. For safety reasons, this required contractors to install sheet piling at road crossings to keep ditches from collapsing. They’ve also had to install devices which literally can suck water out of the ground, giving them some dry ground to dig in.

Because most of the pipe is being installed in farmland, harvesting could have been an issue. However, landowners were well paid for their rights-of-way and for the remote possibility that they might not be able to harvest their crops because of construction.

Spread 1, 159 miles from Carrington, N.D. to the Canadian border, was hit by abysmal weather while working in a low-lying area in September, Dracos said. The contractor, U.S. Pipeline, Houston, is working the spread and added workers to mitigate the delay. Due to weather and length of the spread, they were the first spread to start and the last spread to finish welding.
Everything still looks on target for completion in August of 2000, officials said.

“We’re back in the middle of where we think we should be right now,” Godfrey said.
Dracos agreed. “That goal looks very good. We finished everything we planned for 1999 plus 25 miles more in Spread 4.”

Here’s how the other spreads stack up:
Spread 2 is 165 miles, starting near the Bois de Sioux River in North Dakota and ending near Carrington. H.C. Price, Dallas, is the contractor. The spread will also contain two compressor stations. A directionally drilled crossing was required of the Sheyenne River in Barnes County. 35.6 miles remain to be completed in 2000.
Spread 3 contains 161 miles, begins near New Sweden, MN and ends in the northwest corner of Traverse County, where the borders of North and South Dakota and Minnesota meet. The contractor is Associated Pipe Line Contractors, Houston. 36.8 miles remain to be completed in 2000.
Spread 4 has 148 miles, starting at the southeast corner of Chickasaw County, Iowa and ending in the north-central corner of Nicollet County, MN. The spread required three directionally drilled crossings of the Cedar River, Le Sueur River and the Minnesota River. The contractor is Welded Construction, Perrysburg, OH. 10 miles remain to be completed in 2000.
Spread 5 is 121 miles, starting on the northwest corner of Scott County and ending at the southeast corner of Chickasaw County. Sheehan Pipe Line, Tulsa, is the contractor for the work in Iowa, which included a directionally drilled crossing of the Wapsipinicon River. All of Spread 5 was completed in 1999.
Spread 6 is 124 miles long, beginning on the eastern border of Grundy County, IL and culminating at the northwest corner of Scott County, IA. Murphy Brothers, East Moline, IL, is the contractor for the spread, which includes directionally drilled crossings of the Mississippi River, Hennepin Canal, Green River, Little Vermillion River, Fox River and Aux Sable Creek. 40.5 miles remain to be completed in 2000.

Aux Sable
The smallest spread, a 13.8-mile stretch, is referred to as the delivery segment. This segment will deliver the processed gas from the Aux Sable Liquid Products plant in Channahon, IL, about 50 miles southwest of Chicago, into three major interstates, ANR Pipeline Company, Midwestern Gas Transmission Company, Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America, and two large local distribution companies, Northern Illinois Gas Company and People’s Gas Light & Coke Co.
The contractor is Henkels & McCoy, Norman, OK, which was required to make two especially challenging directional drilling crossings. A spokesman for the contractor said delays in the permitting process and the fact that eight miles of mainline are located on Com-Ed right-of-way posed some problems. Stringent safety measures were put into place to protect pipeline personnel and equipment working near Com-Ed power lines. They were also faced with building in a highly congested industrial area dotted with refineries and manufacturing plants.

“The project had a little bit of everything,” said Project Manager R. Darrell Stevenson, a 20-year veteran in pipelining. “Included were river crossings, directional drills, rock bores, trenching, eight archaeological sites to bypass, river rock ditch, powerline right-of-way, 345 feet of solid rock under highway, drilling under railroad bed, and more.”

Construction of the $365 million-dollar Aux Sable facility began on March 15 and when finished in conjunction with the pipeline, will be one of the largest NGL extraction and fractionation facilities in North America. It will initially process up to 1.6 Bcf/d of natural gas and recover 70,000 bpd of liquids such as ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline. Operators expect the plant will become a major propane supplier for the Midwest. It will connect with existing product pipelines that will make NGL available throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Mechanized Welding
The gas Alliance transports will contain more energy per cubic foot than traditional pipeline systems. As a result, Alliance is expected to carry gas with a heat value in excess of 1,000 Btu/cubic foot, or almost 10 percent more energy than standard gas pipelines. The combination of heating value and MAOP requires the Alliance Pipeline to have a U.S. wall thickness of 0.621 inch (0.562 in Canada) which is 20-50 percent thicker than most operating pipelines. Officials said the added thickness will reduce risks of third-party damage and the possibility of fracture propagation caused by corrosion.

Because the steel is heavier - strung in 80-foot sections weighing 10 tons each - quality of welds became a concern and Alliance became the first major U.S. pipeline to use mechanized welding on its system. Although the technique has been used elsewhere for decades, this marks a major technological breakthrough in the United States and contractors, engineering students and utilities have flocked to construction sites to watch the process. Pipeline officials say mechanized welding provides a far superior weld to conventional stick welding. Another reason for the mechanized welding, sometimes referred to as “automatic welding,” was that Alliance feared that it would not find enough qualified welders quickly enough to maintain the aggressive timetable.

Alliance first had to gain union acceptance, then had to train its contractors. While the contractors are obligated to use mechanized welding wherever feasible, they can select the system they prefer. They have different welding shacks and use a wide variety of tractors and specialized side-booms to hold and move the large shacks in which the welding is done. Stick welding is still required for tie-ins and crossings where the areas are too small to handle the large equipment needed for mechanical welding, said Dennis Egger, Universal Ensco’s resident construction supervisor on Spread 3.

“This is certainly the star of the show here. Everyone’s watching us to see how we do and how it performs. So far it’s done very well,” said Egger, who estimated that 90 percent of the project will use mechanized welding. Officials aimed for 75-80 welds a day and hoped to reach 90. During good weather, they exceeded that figure by 30 percent.

Mechanized welding uses a computer-driven “bug” to complete the physical welding of the pipe joints. The welder sends the bug on its pass by use of a remote controlled handset. The process requires five passes and is about three times faster than traditional methods but what really makes it feasible is the ultrasonic testing that is used to ensure that every weld is of the highest quality. Instead of traditional radiography, ultrasonic testing is safer, uses three dimensions instead of two (depth in addition to width and length), and takes only about a minute to scan the weld. Much of the mechanized welding is being done by CRC-Evans Pipeline International; the other contractors doing mechanized welding are RMS; Vermatt, and Saturnax.

The ultrasonic crews follow closely behind the welders and tell them within three minutes whether the weld is acceptable, and if not, precisely where and what the problem is. Previously it could take two hours to get the results back and welding crews would often return the next day to follow up. Now, the welders can repair the weld quickly, which will then be followed up by another scan. About 800 welds can be put on a diskette which is e-mailed to headquarters at the end of the day to build a permanent record.

The toughness of the weld is far superior to stick welding, officials said. That teamwork, plus the relatively flat terrain, has enabled crews to weld up to three miles per day, a feat which Godfrey described as “outstanding.” On Sept. 10, in fact, all of the U.S. contractors welded 10.2 miles, their peak day.

“We wanted to make sure that every weld was inspected as opposed to a sampling of welds,” Godfrey said. “The number of repairs and rejects has gone way down.”
“We’ve had a fair amount of repairs, but they are so minor that they’re almost cosmetic, so you get good production and excellent quality,” Dracos agreed. “The ultrasonic testing enables the contractor to quickly correct the welding process. That’s why it’s so useful.”

Trenching
The relatively simple soil conditions allow contractors to rely on traditional open-cut trenching and they’re using backhoes for ditching in lieu of trenching machinery, believing that the ditch won’t stand up as well, Egger said.

Because of the heavy steel pipe, contractors have to make doubly sure that their equipment will be able to manage and install the loads safely. Many use side-booms in pairs because, even though weighted down with several tons of counterweights, one alone cannot handle the pipe. After the two side-booms lower the pipe, they piggyback down the line until the section is completed.
The trench is generally following the contours of the land along the route, almost all of which is rural farmland. A hydraulic bending machine is used so that the pipe follows the shape of any particular section of the route. The size of the pipe has made the bending process unusually difficult, Dracos said. The pipe’s weight, and the use of mechanized welding, requires the pipe to be cribbed on skids higher on the right-of-way.

Stringing has been another interesting aspect of the job. Contractors could only put two joints of pipe on a stringing truck due to the weight limits and in certain conditions cut that back to one piece of pipe per truck in the field. Another problem has been the extra depths of burial that two states demanded.

In each of the states, Alliance negotiated Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreements (AIMA) that dealt with depth of cover, drainage tile repair and topsoil conservation. In Iowa and Minnesota, for example, a minimum of five feet of cover is required from the top of the pipe to the finished, remediated soil profile, compared to Canada where the minimum depth of cover in farmland is 42 inches and was Alliance’s initial proposal. At the insistence of these two states, Alliance agreed to the extra depth, which makes it the equivalent of a 42-inch project. This added to the cost and affected production time, which contractors made up for by adding equipment that they included in their bids. The extra depth meant that in some areas Alliance had to ask the FERC for 115 feet of right-of-way, 10 feet wider than they first anticipated. Alliance permanently owns 60 feet of the ROW.

“It cost Alliance more money, but in the end it’s good business because the landowners are happy,” Egger said. The plastic drain tiles are prevalent throughout the farmland, and requirements call for pipe to be at least one foot below any drain tile, thus in some locations trenches are 10 to 12 feet deep.

As an idea of how much equipment was needed, Dracos said contractors on the U.S. side used 202 bulldozers; 230 backhoes; 275 sidebooms; 25 draglines and more than 80 mechanized welding support tractors. On the U.S. side, more than 1,100 non-environmental permits were required.

Because of the wetness, Associated took the unusual approach of welding in front of the ditch and did not dig until the pipe was ready to be laid in order to minimize impact to the soil and drain tiles. One spread had a 40-mile gap between ditching and laying pipe and after a heavy rainstorm, not only was pipe floating off, but temporary drain tiles were lost and it was impossible to make speedy repairs, Egger said.

Directional Drilling
Michels Pipeline Construction Inc., Brownsville, WI, has been assigned most of the 21 directionally drilled crossings, including the Mississippi River. After reaming the Mississippi, they were at a point where they were ready to pull pipe. Once they were two-thirds of the way in the hole, they ran into some rock that they had not encountered with the reamer and were forced to pull back the pipe. Buoyancy considerations were revised, the hole was re-rereamed to a larger size and the pipe went through without further difficulty.

The Des Plaines River for the delivery spread was tricky because it consisted of solid rock and required six weeks of work. Henkels & McCoy was responsible for a two-stage drill from Moose Island, a small privately owned piece of land between the Des Plaines River on the east and the I&M Canal/Des Plaines Backwater on the west.

When crews arrived on the site, near Channahon, IL, they found one small bridge to the island that lacked sturdiness. So the contractors hauled in a pair of railroad flat cars to span the waterway, which enabled them to move large-scale drilling equipment to the island. (Town officials later asked the contractor to leave the bridge in place for emergency vehicles). Equipment capable of 500,000 pounds of pullback and more was required to complete this section of drilling.
The pull under the Des Plaines River to Moose Island measured 2,030 feet while the pull under the I&M Canal was 1,932 feet in length. Both pulls to Moose Island consisted of drilling through riverbed rock in order to pull the 36-inch pipe beneath the waterways. Underwater boring consisted of drilling 30-feet deep into solid rock under each riverbed, approximately 50 feet below the water’s surface, Stevenson said.

The Sheyenne River in North Dakota was also difficult because it had 120 feet difference in elevation. That job took a week and a half. In northern British Columbia, the Peace River presented a highly technical challenge because it involved a deep gorge and was the first successful drill done there, Godfrey said.

“The Mississippi was a big drill as well. But we picked the route because it was a good route. We’re following existing pipeline that’s been in place for 20 years. We’re crossing lands which mostly have been cultivated for a century so are not what you would call pristine natural areas. There are a few areas where we do cross native prairie and we have special plans in place to protect those,” he said.

Environment & Safety
From its inception, Alliance executives realized they needed to get as many environmental stakeholders on board as they could. In Canada, they formed committees comprised of 80 different environmental interest groups who were asked to help Alliance confirm the scope of any studies that might need to be done as well as contributing to the design of the environmental protection plans and mitigation programs.

Alliance’s biggest effort is geared toward more intimate issues which may be smaller in scope, but just as important to the thousands of affected landowners and tenants.
“The important issues to them are dirt and water: how are you going to help that farmer deal with his soil, his dirt, and help him with drainage and the water. Those may seem like small issues, but were the ones repeated over and over in every piece of land we cross.”

In literally hundreds of meetings in small communities throughout the territory, Alliance officials said they tried to make it clear that they will be around long after the pipe gang is gone.
“In most cases, we’re installing our pipe in the land of someone else’s business, so it’s been our intent from the very beginning to work closely with folks,” Godfrey said. “Yes, they may be inconvenienced during construction but they’re not going to be out-of-pocket in the short term, nor in the long term because as a business, it’s not our intent to try and put other businesses out of business.”

The project has encountered few endangered species, although a special study was made to ensure that the habitat of the piping plover (also known as killdeer), which normally nest in North Dakota, was protected. But there was so much water, there was no place for them to nest in their normal areas.
Alliance requires extensive safety and environmental training for all workers and visitors before they are allowed to enter a worksite. So far, there has been one fatality on the right-of-way in a U.S. spread. There have been two traffic accidents involving fatalities associated with driving to and around the rural right-of-ways. Several workers have also received injuries, which officials concede is difficult to avoid on a project of this magnitude.

Operations
During construction, Alliance has assembled an operating company and already has in place most of the teams who will be working in the local offices.
“They’re on the spreads now watching how it’s going into the ground because they have to operate it,” Godfrey said. “We’re working to build all of the business processes that will be in place so that when the pipe is finished, we have the people who can step in and start running it.”
Headquarters for the Canadian portion will remain in Calgary; in the U.S. it is in Minneapolis.
Alliance has a separate team installing an “electronic pipeline” to manage the mainline, including a SCADA system. Through sophisticated GPS, Alliance operators will know within a few centimeters where their pipe is located and much more.

“We’ll be able to tell on every piece of pipe that’s in the ground and on every valve where it came from, what steel was used, what railroad car it came on, how long and where it sat in the pile, what truckload delivered it, did it come out front end or back end, and who did all the welding,” Godfrey said.

It’s not just state-of-the-art construction technology that Alliance is exploiting. It’s a new way of approaching business, he said.

“There are new thought processes involved on how you operate a pipeline when it’s done. A lot of traditional pipelines might have people on board who were both operations and maintenance. We’re going to have a core group of highly skilled, highly technical people with multiple skill sets to operate the pipeline, and we’ll contract out the maintenance aspect which will provide business and job opportunities in a lot of areas on a seasonal basis.

“Part of newness is the attitude and skill set of the people. That’s not technology, but the attitude of the application of the technologies,” Godfrey concluded. P&GJ