BISMARCK - TransCanada Keystone Pipeline's construction through eastern North Dakota next year is a $250 million segment that will bring money into the state through jobs, construction contracts, property tax payments, easement purchases and other land buys, a company vice president says.
Restaurants, gas stations, motels and other businesses in towns along the route between Walhalla and Ludden could see a bump in business as the crews move through, state officials assume.
But the total from land buys, tax payments, construction and other outlays can't be quantified, either because it's too early or the company isn't saying.
The 1,845-mile pipeline will carry a thick crude oil through the state from northern Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois. The oil originates in the vast tar sands fields around Fort McMurray, Alberta, where it is dug like strip-mined coal and processed into "syncrude."
TransCanada has agents working in the state right now, buying easements from the 600 or more property owners whose land is in the proposed right-of-way, said Vice President Robert Jones. They're working out of offices in Bismarck and Valley City.
ADVERTISEMENT
The line will pass through eight counties: Cavalier, Pembina, Walsh, Nelson, Steele, Barnes, Ransom and Sargent.
The company doesn't divulge what it is paying or prepared to pay for easements, nor even release ballpark figures.
"We will offer fair market value," Jones said. "We will also pay for damage" such as to crops, tree rows or other property disturbed during construction.
Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer, whose portfolio includes pipeline issues, said the company could take easements it needs through condemnation if necessary, but predicted the company will try to avoid that at all costs.
What the company buys is the right to cross and dig up the land to lay the 30-inch pipe at least four feet deep and to access and maintain it indefinitely. It will buy, outright, five 5-acre sites on which it will install pumping stations to push the 435,000 barrels a day of crude, Jones said. Public Service Commissioner Susan Wefald said that if the easement purchases are anything like those for wind turbines built in the state, the company will have a clause in each contract barring landowners from disclosing what amounts they received.
Even so, the numbers have been known to leak, she said.
"I have heard that people who have a wind tower sited on their property receive $3,000-$4,000 a year," she said.
The Keystone easements will be a one-time lump sum payment instead of an annual payment, Jones said.
ADVERTISEMENT
He said the company expects to pay $5 million in property taxes a year in North Dakota, but a county-by county breakdown isn't known yet.
Marcy Dickerson, the state Tax Department's supervisor of assessments, said she won't compute how much tax is due in total or to each county until she is notified that the line is completed. The company has no duty to be in touch with her department until then, she said, unless it wants to "start making friends."
TransCanada will bid out the construction and hire pipeline contractor firms to build the line, Jones said, and he expected contractors to go to the local unions along the way to obtain labor.
Brad Blotsky, business agent for the Fargo office of the United Association Local 300 of Plumbers and Pipefitters, said its members could get some work out of the project, but said pipe-laying itself is more likely to be done by members of the Pipeliners 798 based in Tulsa, Okla.
He predicts area workers and companies may build pumping stations.
"We have a couple of contractors in town that would handle that type of thing," he said.
Cole writes for Forum Communication Co., which owns the Herald.
