The first of four Northeast pipeline projects was placed in service earlier this month by Tennessee Gas Pipeline, (TGP) a subsidiary of El Paso Corporation. This action on TGP’s 300 Line Project marks the completion of one of the largest natural gas infrastructure projects currently under way in the Northeast United States.

The upgrade provides access to both new and existing natural gas supplies and increases capacity on the TGP system by 350,000 dekatherms per day. All of the project capacity is contracted under a long-term firm transportation agreement with EQT Energy, LLC, based in Pittsburgh.

According to Wayne Conservation District (WCD) resource conservationist Len Grover, TGP officials met with WCD staff recently to discuss how the project has gone and determine what is needed to facilitate better management of the next TGP project—the Northeast Upgrade Project (NUP), which will involve various townships in both Wayne and Pike counties.

“We expected to have some problems and we did have some problems,” said Grover. “But overall, they did a very responsible job.”

“When you think of the length of that project and hitting every topographical feature in Wayne County, we’ve had smaller projects that have been more of a headache,” added WCD manager Robert Mueller.

Both Grover and Mueller asserted that the 200-foot-wide right of way clearings should be reduced in scale and regarded as a thing of the past.

“We’ve discussed with them the actual need for scarifying that entire width, which we, as conservation districts, see to be very wasteful and unnecessary,” said Grover. “We’re trying to get them to get away from how business has been done for 50 years and look more sensitively at the need for that type of excavation. The three conservation districts in the Northeast region [Wayne, Pike and Susquehanna] have talked about it.”

“And not just the width, but the length,” added Mueller. “They opened up 17 miles of Wayne County all at one time. It kept compounding on them because of the weather conditions, and they couldn’t get to final restoration for months. That’s when we started to see issues.”

The other projects—the Northeast Upgrade Project, the Northeast Supply Diversification Project and the MPP project—are expected to be placed in service in 2012 and 2013, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals (see sidebar for details).

El Paso Corporation owns North America’s largest interstate natural gas pipeline system and is one of North America’s largest independent oil and natural gas producers. For more information visit www.elpaso.com.