Editor’s Note: Allen Fore, vice president for public affairs for Kinder Morgan, the company planning a natural gas pipeline through the Wimberley Valley, sat down with Managing Editor Anita Miller Thursday. Here’s what he had to say. (It has been edited for length.)
SMDR: Have you been surprised by the reaction?
ALLEN FORE: No. Let me qualify that by saying the interest doesn’t surprise me. It’s not unusual that we get a lot of interest in any of our infrastructure projects, but the, um, in Texas if you look at this in a global perspective, and we work across the country from the northeast to California and we see this regularly, interest in infrastructure development from larger policy interests. What I mean by that, at our open houses we’ve had a lot of activists interested in climate change and other hydrocarbon interests beyond the construction of one pipeline ...We haven’t seen that as much in Texas.
SMDR: What I’m hearing is, people think it’s in the wrong place. I was surprised at the number of people that showed up at the Wimberley town hall. (Sponsored by County Commissioner Lon Shell.)
FORE: I was there. There have been a number of meetings. We’ve had our meetings, he had his meeting, some law firms are sponsoring meetings, they’ve all had pretty good, healthy turnouts. We have our fourth open house tonight in Fredericksburg, we were in Blanco last night. There’s a lot of … there’s not the familiarity with pipeline construction you have in many parts of the state, even though there’s been a natural gas pipeline that we operate in Hays County.
SMDR: But not through the Wimberley Valley ... with Wimberley Valley opposition. I feel sure you have put pipelines in sensitive areas before, but is there anything about the geology of the Wimberley Valley that gives you any pause?
FORE: The process for siting pipelines includes environmental review. We’ve hired a karst expert to help us. To bring it down to simple terms, we’re digging a 9-foot trench. We met with five different aquifer authorities yesterday, representatives of them, and in their words, to paraphrase, digging trenches in this area is not uncommon, it happens all the time, their words, landowners do it all the time on their own property. What you want to be sure to do is before you dig the trench to know what’s down 9 feet. That’s what we’re doing now. There’s no issue affecting the aquifer. The primary concern there was don’t take any water and we’re not. Water is not any part of this project. Getting to the point of actually talking about construction and what construction is, it’s a 9 foot trench then you do analysis. We’re still making adjustments on the route where it’s going. We’ll do geotech, some boring down to determine what’s there and will also do some ground penetrating radar. I flew the line last week, latest iteration of it through the five counties. We’re still making some significant shifts in many place for avoidance not only of visual parts above ground like hilly parts, incredible features and cliffs. There are flat lands all the way through that you can use. We’re co-locating with the old Shell pipeline through a significant part of that, following existing infrastructure. Then you go parcel by parcel to make a determination of what is underground and use local experts with that ... We’re not going to construct anything that we think is harmful, we simply won’t do that. We wouldn’t be proposing and operating this if we couldn’t do it with compatibility. You need to understand it’s a natural gas pipeline in a 9 foot trench.
SMDR: You’re not required to do a full EIS (Environmental Impact Statement). Are you going do do one?
FORE: No. I continue to hear about that. Apparently, we’re not supposed to follow their regulations there, we’re supposed to add on regulations that don’t exist. We’re following the regulations that exist in Texas and the federal government. If folks want more regulations, they need to make sure those regulations are enacted ... Another misconception is that an EIS or an EA (Environmental Assessment) is required on FERC projects, an interstate natural gas pipeline. That’s not true. … The State of Texas has a process for pipeline siting exactly like the other 49 states. When you have an intrastate project, whatever product you are transporting, the state makes the determination. The laws are the laws and we’re following those laws as we always have and we’re going to do that. Following what the regulators, the folks that enforce, federal and state agencies, have a process and that’s what we’re following.
SMDR: You mentioned Shell. Can you use their easement? Let’s suppose your pipeline goes through. Are there likely to be more pipelines close to it, shared easements?
FORE: No. We can’t use their easement. One more thing on the environmental piece I think is important — even though there isn’t a required process for a document, called an EIS or an EA, we do environmental surveys on every parcel. We’re doing surveys. Environment review is done on all of the route, it’s simply not this document that’s required on some federally-regulated projects.
SMDR: Are the documents public?
FORE: They are submitted to agencies, to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Back to the question about the easement, we are negotiating with landowners and have been since September. Those negotiations are going well and land acquisition is underway for a 50-foot permanent easement. We require 25 feet of separation between our pipeline and anything else that’s out there. An exclusive easement for one pipeline. If we or somebody else in the future wanted to install another pipeline ... they would have to do it totally separate. Nothing else can be in our right-of-way because of the safety separation. They could potentially go adjacent to an existing easement but that’s only one criteria. You’re encouraged by regulators at the federal and state level and local level to co-locate near existing infrastructure ... There was a landowner last night at the Blanco meeting that wants us to try move off his property even though he’s co-located, there’s a pipeline on his property ... At the end of the day we want the landowners to be comfortable. We’ve moved off of landowners that are strongly opposed and we continue to make adjustments. You’re encouraged to co-locate where possible.
SMDR: You are going to build the pipeline and operate the pipeline and contract with people to put product in the pipeline. How long are those contracts for?
FORE: A minimum of 10 years, could be 15, could be more ... You don’t build a $2 billion project based on speculative use of it, you have to have a significant amount under contract for long term, 10, 15 even 20 years, with credit-worthy companies that can honor those commitments. How we’re paid is we’re an operator. We’re paid a fee for transportation services — that’s all we do, and it’s 100 percent natural gas, methane, we secure those contracts in advance before moving on to the next step, which is a project.
SMDR: When those expire, what are the chances of some other type of product like even crude oil could end up in the pipeline?
FORE: We continue to hear, at Wimberley meeting, a speaker said “they could change this project overnight,” which is a bald faced lie, a scare tactic and simply not true. We are contractually obligated to ship natural gas, this is built as a natural gas system, significantly different than any other type of system. For instance, 42 inches, that is a natural gas system. Generally you don’t see a refined product, gasoline or diesel, in that big of a pipeline. Where is it going? We are going to a gas hub, not a petroleum hub, not a crude hub. Why is that significant? Crude needs tanks. You have to have a tank system to support a crude system and there are no tanks. You have to have pump stations, would have to refit whole system costing millions and millions and millions of dollars and years of regulatory approval... There’s no reason to be creating tank farms when you have the biggest tank farm in the world in the Gulf, the Houston Ship Channel. That’s just crazy talk, that you can have any changes in product. It would make more sense to build a new pipeline somewhere else.
SMDR: If there were to be a construction accident what kind of mitigation plan do you have?
FORE: We’re responsible for whatever we do, for any adverse impacts. We’re responsible for restoring the area. The best way to do that is to avoid adverse impacts and that’s why we’re going to spend a lot of time up front making sure we avoid sensitive areas, any threat to endangered species, golden cheeked warbler is a big deal, and we’re working on developing some additional habitat there. We’re going to be doing all the upfront work we already to to make the pipeline safe ... if we have an adverse impact and it’s possible, it’s a construction site, we will do everything that’s necessary to restore that particular area. That’s our construction plan, our mitigation plan.
SMDR: One more question, subjective but close to the hearts of those that live around here. Have you jumped into Jacob’s Well, have you gone swimming at Blue Hole or the San Marcos River? Do you understand the precious nature of our water that we hold so dear? Have you gotten in?
FORE: No, but I don’t get in other places we construct pipelines where there’s Lake Pontchartrain or San Francisco Bay. I understand, but what I also understand and is troubling to me is the attitude that “we want all the benefits of the energy industry but don’t want to have anything to do with anything associated with it.” It bothers me when I hear folks, wealthy ranchers, wealthy folk saying “put it 70 miles south, that’s the wasteland of Texas. Don’t come here but go there, because their property doesn’t matter as much as ours.”
SMDR: People have lived around the San Marcos Springs for 14,000 years.
FORE: They’ve lived 70 miles down there for a long time too, it doesn’t mean their property is any less important.
