GILLETTE, Wyo. — A company has downsized its plans for building a pipeline to move natural gas from the Rocky Mountains to Midwest markets.
TransCanada Corp. is now looking at installing a shorter pipeline that would begin in Wyoming rather than in Colorado as originally planned.
The shorter Bison pipeline would start west of Gillette and run to North Dakota where it would link up with another pipeline that moves gas to the Midwest.
TransCanada, one of North America’s largest pipeline companies, originally planned to include the Bison pipeline segment in the 673-mile Pathfinder pipeline that would have started in Meeker.
Construction of the Pathfinder pipeline depended on support from suppliers in the Rocky Mountain Basin.
Until this spring, the company was trying to get customer support for the Pathfinder project. Its decision to scale down to the Bison project comes after a drop in natural-gas prices decreased drilling in much of the Rocky Mountain states.
“If, in fact, there is customer support that comes back around in the next year or two to build that project from Colorado to Gillette, then it will be an extension of Bison,” said TransCanada spokeswoman Beth Jensen.
The 302-mile long Bison pipeline would cost about $610 million.
The company is waiting to get a permit for the Bison project from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and hopes to get it in spring 2010.
Plans call for construction to be completed in late fall or early winter 2010.
TransCanada has long-term confirmed contracts for the Bison project with four shippers out of the Powder River Basin for 407 million cubic feet of gas a day for 10 years, Jensen said. That’s most of the designed capacity of the pipeline, which would be able to carry up to 477 million cubic feet of gas a day.
