Central Mass. may see smaller gas pipeline
KINDER MORGAN
The purple line shows a revised pipeline route proposed by Kinder Morgan that would travel through southern New Hampshire.
The planned natural gas pipeline that is now being shifted a few miles over the border into New Hampshire may not spell the end of Kinder Morgan’s efforts to expand the flow of the fuel in the region.
An executive with the Houston-based company said it’s looking into the possibility of a smaller pipeline into Central Massachusetts.
The Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. (TGP), a Kinder Morgan subsidiary, announced Friday that it plans to bypass several towns in North Central Massachusetts and re-route its planned Northeast Energy Direct pipeline through southern New Hampshire. The plan is detailed in an amended filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
This new “preferred” route would reduce the environmental impact while still bringing more natural gas into the region, Allen Fore, vice president of public affairs for Kinder Morgan, said.
“There’s still many, many steps to happen but this will be our preferred route … the benefit of a co-location is you already have an impacted area,” he said. “The important thing is we are working hard to address what we have heard from state agencies, towns and other stakeholders to develop a route that is commercially viable” and that can secure the necessary permits.
The project, which is subject to lengthy review, was originally proposed to run the new line through about 40 communities along the Bay State’s border with Vermont and New Hampshire. The newly proposed path bypasses them, including 13 communities in Massachusetts in Northern Worcester and Middlesex counties. These include Athol, Ashburnham and Winchendon. However, the new proposal would run the line through four other communities that would not have been impacted by the original plan: Cheshire, Hancock, Lanesborough and Shelbourne, according to TGP. Yet, the possibility of a smaller pipeline directly into Central Massachusetts is being explored, said Fore.
Although the line avoids much of Massachusetts, groups such as No Fracked Gas in Mass. still oppose the use of natural gas that comes from shale fields in Pennsylvania, where natural gas is harvested through fracking.
“Our opposition to pipeline expansion isn’t a matter of where a pipeline goes, it’s that new fossil fuel infrastructure isn’t needed,” said the group in a released statement following the announcement of the new route. “There are many other options for meeting this need that do not involve disruptive, permanent infrastructure that further ties us to a fossil fuel economy.”
The pipeline expansion project will bring more natural gas from Pennsylvania to the company’s Dracut distribution center. The additional gas will be back-filled into the existing 600 miles of Massachusetts pipelines once it reaches Dracut, said Fore.
The new pipeline will meet a rising demand for not only home heating but also electrical generation as coal and oil-fired electricity plants are phased out in favor of gas-fired plants, he said.
“We don’t build projects and hope someone will use them. We build projects that are supported fully by customers with long-term commitment,” said Fore, who said Kinder Morgan supplies gas to NStar and National Grid, among other utilities in the region. “They need the gas and we are in the business of delivering the gas.”
The recent drop in oil prices does not affect the long-term policy and environmental shifts away from coal and oil for heating and electricity generation to natural gas, he said.
The final filing for the project will take place in fall of 2015, he said, with a best-case timeline of construction by 2017 and activation the following year.
The project – which impacts Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania – is expected to cost $5 billion and create 3,000 construction jobs, said Fore.
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