[Mr.HappySilp]

Originally Posted by jasonturbo

Hmmmm...

Pipelines typically only "cross" cities in the following situations;
- Existing shared ROW crosses through city, more often than not this is because the shared ROW was in place long before the area was developed
- There is no practical alternative route

Major reasons we do not cross cities in our design include
- Significantly higher consequence of failure in the event of a rupture/leak
- Higher material costs as a result of CSA Z662 dwelling concentration categories (There is a higher safety factor in highly populated areas that require pipe which either has a higher wall thickness or a higher SMYS)
- Higher construction costs and significant schedule impacts associated with building in developed areas
- Significant schedule and cost impacts related to a large number of landowner agreements
- Limited space for future development, expansion, or maintenance
- And about a million other reasons...

More often than not, in my experience, the ROW's that tend to cross the most densely populated areas are those which were installed by a Public Institution (IE: Line 9 which was initially commissioned by the NEB, later purchased by Enbridge). No pipeline owner/operator wants to go anywhere near a heavily populated area.

Now having said all that, imagine if a pipeline did cross major cities, if every one of those cities had a royalty of even 5% there would be no incentive for a pipeline company to commission the line.

Are we going to start making telecom companies or power companies pay royalties to municipalities for their transmission lines or radio waves? That would be great… so they can pass the costs along to the consumer, yay more public income to mismanage!

The pipeline does benefit people in nearby communities, in many small towns with limited industry it's basically the dream to get on with the pipeline company in operations or maintenance etc.

I wrote this message from my desk on the 11th floor of an office tower for one of the biggest pipeline companies in the world, we are not evil, we work very hard to do everything right and to protect people and the environment. The people that work here are normal people, they also don't want a pipeline to explode behind their house etc. There is always going to be some degree or risk, but I can tell you that we eliminate every single risk we possibly can and no comprimise in safety or quality is ever made in the interest of saving money - ever.

At this point I will bring up the most significant risk pipelines operators face - external factors out of our control. A good example of this would be what happened with the Burnaby Kinder Morgan line strike. In this case a contractor was hired to work on a sewer line in close proximity to the crude pipeline, shortly after the work begin the crude line was ruptured by a excavator being operated by Cusano Contracting.

Cusano Contracting claimed that Kinder Morgan did not mark the line correctly. Kinder Morgan is an experienced pipeline company with a near-perfect track record of operating their pipelines. Cusano Contracting is/was a very small and seemingly inexperience construction contractor selected by the City of Burnaby to perform this work based on the fact that they were the lower bidder. "The contractors misjudged the pipeline by about three meters", city spokeswoman Susan Rae said. Just from the most basic rules of ground disturbance they never should have had an excavator that close to an existing line - this is why god invented the shovel, detail bucket, jackhammer, and Hydrovac truck.

Yet somehow people take a story like this, and from it, assert that pipelines are not safe. I would argue that incompetent construction contractors are not safe.

I find most people in BC to be very reasonable and objective when it comes to pipelines, there are only a small number of anti-fossil fuel types who will only be satisfied when the whole world runs on green energy.. meanwhile these people continue to suck back resources at an alarming rate lol. #hypocrites

Still so what you are just trying to say is well since we are safe and create jobs therefore we aren't paying you guys a penny.

Sure maybe you guys are safest but there is a chance of an accident and when accidents occur who pays for the full cost of the clean up and all the environment clean up cost? I am sure hell know not any company in the world will cover the cost of clean up 100%. They can't because the environment damage is on going and that's when the city is hook for the bill. A bill that us tax payers are on the hook for. So why shouldn't the city take a cut from it because the risk is on their end.