Planning

The BLP is a 58 km, 500 mm diameter gas pipeline to link the Brooklyn compressor station, 12 km west of Melbourne, to an existing pipeline near Lara on the outskirts of Geelong. Once completed, there will be a 500 mm Class 600 pipeline from Brooklyn Compressor Station to Iona, near Port Campbell. A number of options were considered during the planning phase with Option 3 (see figure 1) being the final selected option based on safety, environmental and utilisation of existing APA easements.

Project Details

The pipeline was designed in accordance with AS2885.1-2007. The pipeline will be ANSI Class 600, with Maximum Allowable Operating Pressure of 10.2 Mpag. The pipe material is API5LX70 to provide the best overall outcome with respect to cost and long term integrity. The pipeline includes the first 500 mm ND electrically resistance welded pipe manufactured in Australia.

For corrosion protection the pipeline has been externally coated with 600 microns of Dual Layer Fusion Bonded Epoxy and internally lined with 50 microns of epoxy.

Major BLP system components include:

* inlet facilities at Brooklyn which include a regulator station between the BLP and the 7.39 Pa system, an additional regulator run on the existing Brooklyn City Gate and a scraper launcher; * intermediate facilities including remotely actuated mainline valves (4 off), branch valves (2 off) and cathodic protection system; * a connection to the South West Pipeline (Lara to Iona), at the Lara City Gate.

The pipeline alignment traverses a mixture of industrial, rural living and open grazing land uses.

The route is mainly through rocky, basaltic subsoils overlain by clay based topsoils.

Project Approvals

The preparations for the construction of the BLP commenced in early 2007 when APA presented the Preliminary Environment Report to Government on 24 May 2006 and was advised that assessment under the Environment Effects Act 1978 was not required and that the provisions of the Pipelines Act 2005 applied.

Following approval of the Environment Report, a licence to construct and operate the pipeline was issued in July 2007. The consent to construct, supported by a Construction Environmental Management Plan and a documented Safety Management Plan prepared by APA’s selected EPC contractor A J Lucas, was approved in September 2007 and construction commenced in November 2007.

Additional consents under other acts, such as the Heritage Act 1995, the Water Act 1989, the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) and the Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 were obtained.

APA as part of its commitments to government (Victorian) policy will provide for cleared native vegetation lost by the construction of the pipeline by securing suitable offsets as required by guidelines for the ‘Native Vegetation Management Framework- A Framework for Action’.

The main environmental issues identified in the Environmental Report and the EPBC approval have been associated with procedures for clearing Legless Lizards in designated grassland areas, conducting surveys for the Golden Sun Moth; and procedures for ensuring that the Growling Grass Frog is protected during waterway crossings of the Kororoit Creek, Werribee River and Little River.

Another sensitive environmental site crossed by the pipeline is the Derrimut Grasslands, which contain the endangered ecological vegetation class, Plains Grasslands. However the proposed route is along a fire track and adjacent to the existing Brooklyn to Ballan pipeline easement hence disturbance is minimised. Specific management plans have been developed in consultation with Parks Victoria and APA have committed to a five year restoration plan of this section of the Derrimut Grasslands.

APA consulted extensively with the 68 affected properties on the project of which twelve are statutory authorities and 56 are individual land owners. Numerous stakeholders including four councils, waterway, road, rail, catchment authorities, utilities suppliers and local community groups were involved in consultations relating to planning for the project.

Heritage Management Plans were successfully negotiated with the two aboriginal cultural heritage groups to provide monitors during construction. An important aboriginal Midden site was discovered on the ROW during the ‘clear and grade’ operation and archaeologists conducted further examinations and recorded the artefacts found.

Construction

Lucas Operations Pty Ltd (Lucas) have been contracted to design, procure and construct the pipeline using standard industry practices including open trenching methods for general pipeline installation, with boring utilised under sealed roads and a railway crossing.

Pipeline construction is very challenging with four major water, two freeway and one railway crossing. The majority of the alignment is through very hard basalt rock. Up to 40 excavators were working on the pipeline at any one time. Approximately 4 km of the pipeline is being constructed in conjunction with the Deer Park Bypass Freeway construction.

Construction commenced in early October 2007 and is planned to be completed by late March/early April 2008.

A substantial section of the pipeline is constructed and it is planned for sections of the pipeline to be tested in March 2008.