Trans Mountain Pipeline under construction in 1953
$100-million pipeline tunnels through mountains, under rivers
After the Leduc oil strike of 1947, the crude from oil wells in Alberta needed to be transported to market.
To that end, the 718-mile-long (or 1,150-kilometre-long) Trans Mountain Pipeline was engineered and built.
Workers blasted through rock, drained swampland and dug a tunnel under the Fraser River before carefully welding, wrapping and laying down the sections of pipe. At a cost of $100 million, the pipeline was a good-news story for oil-hungry markets.
The project was the second large-scale pipeline to be constructed to carry oil from Alberta to markets far away.
The first, the Interprovincial Pipeline, ran southeast from Edmonton to Superior, Wisconsin, following a route across the Prairies and along the shore of Lake Superior. It was later extended to Sarnia, Ont.
The Trans Mountain Pipeline was capable of carrying different products through the pipe in a series, one after the other.
Due to their differing densities, heavy crude, light crude, distillates and gasoline could all travel with a minimum of mixing.
In 2007, a contractor working for the city of Burnaby, B.C., punctured the pipeline while digging a new storm sewer line, apparently unaware that the oil pipeline existed.
Almost 250,000 litres of oil spilled into nearby waterways before the rupture could be contained.
Corrections
- This article incorrectly said the Trans Mountain Pipeline was built by Kinder Morgan in 1953. In fact, Kinder Morgan purchased the pipeline in 2005.Jul 04, 2018 3:07 PM ET