7-13-10 Elko Daily Free Press
BLM approves Ruby Pipeline rights of way
ELKO -The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday announced its approval of rights of way for the Ruby Pipeline that will extend from Wyoming to Oregon, coming through Elko County.
El Paso Corp. can't begin construction on the 678-mile, $3 billion natural gas pipeline, however, until the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issues a notice to proceed and state historic preservation offices sign off.
"We're very, very close to that finish line," El Paso spokesman Richard Wheatley said Tuesday. "It's been two and a half years in the permitting process."
FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen said Tuesday the order to proceed will come from Director of Energy Projects Jeff Wright, and "he has to make sure all the ducks are in a row to make a determination."
Approvals have been slower than El Paso expected, but Wheatley said the company still hopes to put the natural gas pipeline into production next March.
"We have the ability to mobilize workers and worker camps very quickly," he said.
Robert Scruggs, acting for State BLM Director Ron Wenker, signed the record of decision and the right-of-way grant for the pipeline as the designated federal officer for the four-state project, according to BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley.
The BLM action involved the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"We are very pleased to receive conditional BLM approval for this important infrastructure project," said Jim Cleary, president of El Paso's Western Pipeline Group.
"We expect to satisfy the BLM conditions and receive our FERC notice to proceed very soon and begin construction shortly thereafter," he said.
"It's just a matter of putting the documents together and sending them out for a signature. We're almost there," Mark Mackiewicz, project manager for the BLM, told The Associated Press.
Wheatley said the Ruby Pipeline construction work will involve 5,000 workers, and El Paso has already trained hundreds of workers for the project.
Ruby Pipeline has a temporary FERC permit for project staging and an earlier permit for inventory storage that includes the hundreds of pipes at the Northeast Nevada Regional Railport at Osino.
El Paso also is seeking condemnation of 0.768 acres of land in Elko County for the project because the land is in an estate with no owner of record for the company to work out an easement agreement, Wheatley said.
"It is now being administered by the county. We had no choice but to go to court," he said.
Ruby is a 42-inch interstate natural gas transmission pipeline that extends from Opal, Wyo., to Malin, Ore., bringing gas to markets in Nevada, California and the Pacific Northwest.
The pipeline will have an initial design capacity of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day.
El Paso is partners with Global Infrastructure Partners in the Ruby Pipeline Project. Global Infrastructure is an independent fund that invests worldwide in infrastructure assets and businesses.
According to the record of decision, Ruby will post a $42 million performance bond.
The document states that the bond will apply to all cultural resource post-field work costs associated with implementing the approved treatment plans in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Oregon.
The BLM's record of decision was based on an environmental impact statement of the proposed pipeline project, and copies of the decision will be available on compact discs, on the Internet and at BLM offices, including the Elko office.
The Internet address is: www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/info/nepa/ruby_pipeline_project.html.
Mail requests may be sent to Mark Mackiewicz, BLM national project manager, 125 South 600 West, Price, UT 84501. The e-mail address for requests is blmruby@blm.gov.