Coastal GasLink hits 90% completion milestone
Coastal GasLink, the TC Energy subsidiary building the 670-km pipeline linking gas fields in northeastern BC to the LNG Canada project at Kitimat, on BC’s northern coast, said June 28 it had achieved 90% completion, and remains on pace for mechanical completion by the end of this year.
“When building this extremely complex and critical infrastructure, each percentage represents a hard-fought achievement,” CGL president Bevin Wirzba said. “In fact, despite the challenging high-risk work this year, we have had the safest start in Coastal GasLink history.”
In its latest construction update, CGL said Section 6, which extends 63 km from south of Burns Lake to south of Houston, had installed 100% of pipe, the third of eight ssection to achieve that mark. Sections 1 and 4 achieved the milestone last year, and across all sections, 625 km of pipe has been installed and nearly 97.5% of all pipe has been welded.
On the troubled Section 7 of the project, which crosses disputed Wet’suwet’en territory from south of Houston to north of Morice Lake, mainline welding was recently completed, and 73.3% of the 77 km of pipe has been installed.
Also notable in the latest update was the completion of the Canada’s first raised bore on Steep Slope 3 in Section 8, a challenging 84 km section across the Coast Mountain range just east of Kitimat.
On Steep Slope 3, workers bored a tunnel more than 100 metres into the mountain and 120 metres vertically at a 60° angle to maneuver pipe through the mountain. Pipe installation through the raised bore was completed ahead of schedule, CGL said.
“While this will be the first time the raised bore method is used in Canada, the Coastal GasLink team tapped into the expertise of the TC Energy team, who successfully implemented this technology in Mexico,” it said.
About 4,000 workers were active across the project at the end of May, CGL said, and in the coming months, “we expect more than 6,000 men and women to be working along the project route.”