Power and Gas Transmission Dominate Northern Rockies Project Starts

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The northern Rocky Mountain states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana have approximately $1.3 billion of industrial projects scheduled to kick off in the third quarter of this year. Power and Gas Transmission projects feature heavily in the third-quarter project starts of the three states.

Click on image at right for a breakdown by industry of third-quarter project starts in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

At more than double the second-highest value project, the Langley Gulch combined-cycle power plant near New Plymouth, Idaho, is the largest project to kick off in the three states this quarter. The project has an estimated total investment value of $427 million and will have a generating capacity of 330 megawatts (MW). The project is expected to take about two years to complete. Kiewit Power Engineers Company (Lenexa, Kansas) is acting as engineer on the project, while The Industrial Company (TIC) (Steam Springs, Colorado), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kiewit Corporation, is responsible for construction.

In Wyoming, gas transmission projects lead other industrial sectors in both value and number. El Paso Corporation (NYSE:EP) (Houston, Texas) subsidiary Colorado Interstate Gas Company (Colorado Springs, Colorado) plans to kick off the Ruby Pipeline project in Wyoming this quarter. The Ruby Pipeline will run from the Opal gas hub in southwestern Wyoming to interconnections in Malin, Oregon. El Paso Corporation announced earlier this month that it had received Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval to commence construction on the pipeline, which will have an initial design capacity of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day.

In a company press release, Jim Cleary, president of El Paso Corporation's Western Pipeline group, said: "In addition to supplying significant supplies of clean-burning natural gas to the western states, we are also proud that Ruby will employ almost 5,000 people from Wyoming to Oregon during construction, and that the pipeline will provide significant economic benefits to the four states along our route for years to come."

Compared to neighbors Wyoming and Idaho, significantly fewer projects are kicking off in Montana this quarter. The state's largest project to begin in the third quarter is a $43 million grassroot natural gas-fired power station near the city of Great Falls. The 43-MW Highwood power station is the first step in a larger scheme of the facility's owner, Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative Incorporated (SME) (Billings, Montana). SME has plans to add a second 43-MW unit to the facility after the first is completed, following which the units would be converted to combined-cycle operation to increase efficiency and power output. Completion of the second unit is tentatively scheduled for early 2012, and the combined-cycle conversion would begin later that year, wrapping up in 2013.

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