Tap is turned on natural gas pipeline

The mostly underwater pipeline will provide the cleaner-burning fuel to power plants across the state.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 29, 2002

A 581-mile pipeline carrying natural gas from Alabama to Florida started flowing Tuesday, becoming the state's first new source of that fuel in 40 years.

The Gulfstream Natural Gas System pipeline, which runs along the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and makes landfall near the mouth of Tampa Bay, will provide cleaner-burning natural gas to power plants across the state.

Although no plants in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco or counties northward have signed up, one nearby customer will be the Florida Power & Light plant in Manatee County. That plant currently burns only oil.

Other customers of the gas, which comes from wells offshore from Alabama, include new plants owned by Florida Power and independent Calpine Corp. in Polk County and another Florida Power plant in the Kissimmee area.

"It's a needed pipeline," said Michael Heim, an industry analyst for A.G. Edwards & Sons. "It should be beneficial to the consumers."

Competition between the new pipeline and the existing Florida Gas Transmission line should keep gas prices lower for the power companies, which may help customers, he said.

Laying the pipe required 2,500 workers installing 450,000 tons of pipe, beginning in June 2001 and finishing up in less than a year.

To reach energy-hungry Florida, the pipeline stretches 430 miles underwater, traveling not only through deep areas of the gulf but also through the shallows of Tampa Bay to surface at Port Manatee.

Gulfstream laid the pipe by digging a trench through the bottom in which to bury the line. That meant that some areas of hard bottom that are important to marine life were damaged by the work.

Before work began the U.S. Department of Commerce complained that "this pipeline has the potential to significantly degrade sensitive marine habitats, including those important to commercial and recreational fisheries."

The hard bottom is the foundation of all life in the gulf. Ridges and niches in the limestone offer corals and sponges a place to grab hold, providing a home for shrimp, worms and starfish. Smaller fish can conceal themselves in the nooks and crannies. Their presence attracts larger fish looking for food.

"They moved the pipeline corridor as much as they could to avoid the sensitive hard bottom habitats," said Walt Jaap of the Florida Marine Research Institute, who has monitored the work for the state. The company also rerouted the line to avoid sensitive sea grass beds in Tampa Bay.

But it just could not bend the line enough to avoid lasting harm to the hard bottom in both the gulf and Tampa Bay. So the company hired a team of divers to relocate sponges, corals, mollusks and other sea life in the way of the pipeline that were attached to any rocks that weighed less than 20 pounds, said company official Denise Martin.

"They used Portland cement, and some of them held pretty well but some didn't," Jaap said.

And Gulfstream dropped about 130,000 tons of limestone rocks into the water to replace the hard bottom that was being torn up, Martin said. Some of those were dropped between Port Manatee and the Sunshine Skyway.

"We spent a quarter of a million dollars siting where to put the rocks in Florida waters," Martin said.

The company also dropped into the bay and gulf manufactured modules that are designed to mimic reefs and provide fish a place to hide.

So far they appear to be working, Jaap said. "There were quite a few stone crabs and fish hanging around," he said.

For now the pipeline terminates in Osceola County, but there are plans to extend it another 150 miles to the Palm Beach area.

Construction on that phase will begin in the fall, depending on whether the company is able to sign up enough power company customers in that area, said Gulfstream spokesman Chris Stockton.

When finished, the pipeline's total price tag is expected to be $1.6-billion, Stockton said. Company officials declined to say how much the first phase cost.

Originally there were two companies vying for the chance to run the first new pipeline to the state since the Florida Gas Transmission line was laid through the Panhandle and down to South Florida 40 years ago.

Williams Co. was building one that would come ashore in Pasco County, while Gulfstream was being proposed by Coastal Corp. of Houston. But the Federal Trade Commission pressured Coastal to sell the Gulfstream pipeline project to Williams, as a condition of Coastal merging with another company that controls the only existing natural gas pipeline into Florida. If Coastal had an interest in both, it would smack of a monopoly.

As a result of the sale, Williams dropped plans for the Pasco pipeline, which was more controversial because it passed through more populous areas.

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