W.Va. intrastate pipeline to carry gas to Columbia line
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. – An intrastate pipeline under construction in northern West Virginia will help fill a need for new infrastructure to transport natural gas produced in the state to markets, state and industry officials said.
The Stonewall Gas Gathering pipeline will connect gas-producing areas in and around Doddridge and Harrison counties with Columbia Transmission’s interstate pipeline, which runs through Braxton County. The new pipeline also will run through Lewis County, The Exponent Telegram reported.
“Any time you can build a pipeline that connects into a major transmission line, then you create capacity for wells that are drilled or will be drilled to produce,” said Charlie Burd, executive director of the Independent Oil and Natural Gas Association of West Virginia. “It’s only when that well is tied to a line and can produce into it that it provides any economic benefit to the state other than the investment in drilling the well.”
Customers and producers are ready and waiting for pipelines that connect gas wells to markets, he said.
“There’s a terrible infrastructure problem. We need lots of pipeline capacity to get the amount of gas that’s being produced in these wells to market. That is why Dominion has a project. That is why EQT has a project. That is why Columbia has a project,” Burd told the newspaper. “The natural gas that’s produced here, we use a fraction of it. The rest has to be sold outside of West Virginia to maximize the potential for the state.”
Potential benefits from natural gas production, such as severance tax revenues and royalties for mineral owners, cannot occur without sufficient pipeline capacity, he said.
State officials are “pleased to see the project coming to fruition. These pipelines are necessary to get the gas to market,” West Virginia Development Office spokeswoman Chelsea Ruby said.
Momentum, the Stonewall Gas Gathering project’s developer, h awarded a contract to Wisconsin-based Precision Pipeline to build the pipeline. Momentum expects construction to continue through the end of the year.
About half of the roughly 600 Precision employees working on the project are being hired locally, Momentum spokesman Dave Mashek said.
Mashek said the pipeline will serve as “an important infrastructure component” to continue natural gas development in the Marcellus shale.