Tulsa-based Williams Companies is right in the middle of a 685-mile long gas pipeline project for the nation’s Southeast markets that won approval this week from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The project would also create 339,400 horsepower of compression capable of moving about 1.1 Bcf/d to markets in Florida and the Southeast even though they were opposed by environmentalists.
One of them was the Hillabee Expansion Project by Williams which would add capacity on a Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line segment in Alabama. Williams said the pipeline was necessary to serve the growing need for natural gas by local utilities,industries and power generators inthe southeastern United States. The Hillabee Expansion Project is designed to expand the existing Transco pipeline’s capacity in Alabama beginning in May 2017. It will supply gas to the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline that also won FERC approval.
The projects are the result of a 2012 request by Florida Power and Light. Currently, the Florida gas market relies on two pipelines, the Florida Gas Transmission and the Gulfstream Natural Gas. But power demand in 2015 was the strongest on record for the Southeast with strong deliveries to power plants in Florida driving some of the growth.
Environmentalists and some landowners raised questions about the route through sensitive topography, the impact on hundreds of acres of wetland and questions on the need for the project. But FERC decided those concerns had been adequately addressed and the projects should benefit other pipelines and their customers and reduce the chances of supply disruption. The government agency also found the impacts on the landowners and communities had been minimized by the percentage of pipeline routed through existing rights of way or previously disturbed corridors.
The Saba Trail is a joint venture of Spectra Energy, NextEra Energy and Duke Energy and would take gas from Transco compressor Station 85 across Alabama and Georgia and bring gas to the Florida market.
The Wililams’ Hillabee project would expand the Transco pipeline capacity in Alabama in three phases, adding 43.5 miles of 42-inch and 48-inch-diameter looping pipeline in eight segments.
