Canadian Crude: Owning Land On A Pipeline
TransCanada has been in business for more than 50 years, and has thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines. In 1996, the Calgary based company helped build a crude oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Wyoming.
On a picture perfect autumn day in central Montana, Gary Brewington is getting some work done around his ranch.
Montana Landowner Gary Brewington says, "We always kinda wondered about it, I guess, when they first came in here."
Brewington's wonder about an oil pipeline eventually lead to a large-scale project, bigger than anything the Montana rancher had ever seen on his land.
Gary's wife Susan Brewington says, "They had a lot of machinery. It didn't seem like it took them that long, they were quite organized."
The Express oil pipeline was built in 1996 with the help of TransCanada. It brings crude oil from Alberta through Montana and into Wyoming, where it hooks up with the Platte pipeline. And besides a few signs sitting along the roadside landowners in Montana say they don't even notice they have a crude oil pipeline running underneath their land.
Gary Brewington says, "Really the grass is better there than it is on the other land."
The Brewington's say the pipeline, which crosses a mile and a half of their land, only took about a month to build. After they finished, construction workers planted grass over the pipeline and even came back a year later to clean up.
Susan Brewington says, "We had some weird looking weeds we had never seen before and someone came and pulled each one by hand to make sure they didn't get settled in the area."
Gary Brewington says, "They had a crews that took down and repaired the fences and took them down so we didn't have to do any of that."
But travel 500 miles north to New Brigden, Alberta, and the story from landowners is the exact opposite.
Alberta landowner Willy Doolaege says, "God put this here native grass here and it's been here for years and years and when you go and rip up and what not, sure they go and scatter some native seed there, but it never comes back the way it was, you don't have that beautiful mat, and what not, and that's a major concern."
The Keystone Pipeline would go right next to a natural gas pipeline in Alberta, which is also operated by TransCanada.
Alberta landowner Jim Ness says, "What we are concerned about as ranchers, we want to look after the details that will affect the next couple of generations."
Jim Ness and Willy Doolaege are two Alberta landowners who are getting a group together to fight for their land rights as TransCanada pushes to get the Keystone Pipeline approved.
KELOLAND News asks: So this thing doesn't have full support here in Canada? Doolaege says, "On no, not full support. Absolutely not."
They have some condtions they want met before they sign agreements to allow the Keystone project to be built on their land. They want the crude oil line buried deeper than four feet, would like to know details of an abandonment plan for the line and want TransCanada to pay for the liability costs of having the pipe under their land.
Doolaege says, "But we're getting a lot smarter with a lot of this sort of stuff and we're seeing the damage that some of these here leases and pipelines have done to our land."
TransCanada says it will bury the pipe four feet underground, which is two feet deeper than what the law requires. The company also says it will work with landowners once it is ready to stop using the line, and already pays fair market value for land. But these landowners want to make sure their concerns are addressed in writing before they agree to anything.
Ness says, "What I would tell those Dakota farmers is don't trust TransCanada."
Doolaege says, "That they are not just addressed verbally, that they have written documentation that they are going to be addressed."
Back in Montana, landowners who are now ten years into their pipeline experience say it's worked out for them.
Brewington says, "The cattle are still grazing on the ground. It didn't hurt it any."
Two different stories from landowners who have had contact and concerns with TransCanada.
TransCanada no longer owns or operates the Express Pipeline through Montana. KELOLAND News checked with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration about leaks on the Express line; it says there have not been any incidents since it was built.
But in 1996 the pipeline the Express hooks up with, the Platte pipeline, lost 220 barrels of oil at a pump station because of corrosion. TransCanada owned half of the line at that time but did not operate it.
