Keystone Projects Flourish
Keystone XL Pipeline construction a lifeline for many workers
BY ROD WALTON World Staff Writer
Sunday, March 03, 2013
PRAGUE – Love it or hate it, the Keystone XL Pipeline is making its way to the sea.
The march to the Gulf Coast, however, is not analogous to General Sherman rushing to Savannah but rather like Quentin Tarantino making one of his movies. The project is non-linear, full of parallel storylines and intensely debated in many circles.
The Keystone XL offers either the right kind of imported oil or a potentially thick and sour environmental disaster, depending on who’s doing the classifying. For the pipeliners actually doing the planning, trenching, lowering and welding, well, it’s all about the economic impact on them.
Each of the three spreads of Keystone’s southern leg from Cushing to the Gulf Coast, which began work late last year, is spending about $2 million a month on construction costs alone. The overall $12 billion project has helped revive a pipelining industry that was relatively dormant until only a few years ago.