TOOELE — The scope of the Kern River Gas Transmission Co.'s new pipeline expansion project was put in simple, if overwhelming, terms on Wednesday by the company's president, Robert L. Sluder.
During groundbreaking ceremonies for the project, Sluder referred to the nearby pipe segments, 36 inches in diameter, 80 feet long, stacked several feet high and stretching seemingly to the horizon at the Utah Industrial Depot. In all, about 120 miles of pipeline.
"It's a pretty impressive sight," Sluder said. "Multiply that by almost six times and you'll get a feel of what we're taking on here."
Despite the huge scope of work ahead, Salt Lake-based Kern River expects the $1.27 billion expansion project to be operational by May. Paralleling a 926-mile line built 10 years ago from Wyoming to California will be 717 miles of new line that will more than double the amount of natural gas Kern River has flowing from Wyoming to Utah, Nevada and California.
Kirk Morgan, vice president of marketing and regulatory affairs for Kern River, noted that much of the expansion project's gas will be used for power generation plants "that will help restore the demand-and-supply balance that has been disconnected in the West." The new gas supply will help produce enough power for about 6 million homes.
"The West really can ill-afford to have a repeat of the energy crisis, volatility and reliability that we saw 18 months ago. . . . Our objective is to energize the West and bring a lot of the much-needed energy infrastructure and reliability and price stability to a region in the West that has really been devastated by a lack of both," he said.
Sluder said the two Kern River lines will be able to ship about 1.9 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. That is up from the 845 million cubic feet of capacity on the 10-year-old line.
About 341 miles of the new line will be placed in Summit, Morgan, Salt Lake, Utah, Juab, Millard, Beaver, Iron and Washington counties. About 25 miles in Utah, part of 205 miles of the entire project, will not need additional pipeline.
Also, compression horsepower will be added at several compressor stations, and some meter stations will be modified. A new compressor station in Salt Lake County will be among three built in connection with the expansion.
In all, that's a $526 million investment in Utah, which also will receive about $5.6 million in annual property tax revenue from the new line.
David Sokol, chairman and chief executive officer of Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., of which Kern River is a subsidiary, said the expansion is the largest single energy transmission investment in the country in 10 years.
"We think it is important to invest in the infrastructure of the United States. We think it's been, frankly, very poorly invested in in the last 20 years," he said. "We've lived off 70 years of overcapacity that was built up in the first 70 years of the last century, and now clearly we've overstretched that."
Kern River expects to have about 5,000 people involved in the project, which received the go-ahead from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on July 17. About 35 percent of the work force is expected to come from local labor pools.
The new line will be added to privately held MidAmerican's portfolio of $17 billion in assets and 12,000 workers in eight countries. MidAmerican took over Kern River from Oklahoma-based Williams Cos. in March.
"It would be ridiculous," Sokol said, "for us to stand up here and not acknowledge that we're here because it's a great investment for us and a great project for America."
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