Just over two weeks ago, as the window for felling trees during the Indiana Bat hibernation season drew to a close, Genscape flew the Rover right-of-way (ROW) for the second time to gauge construction progress.
After analyzing over 1,000 high-resolution aerial pictures, Genscape’s conclusion was positive. With only two days left to clear trees, Rover’s ROW appeared clear of forest, and in most areas construction had progressed to the deployment of construction materials. Heavy machinery was scattered across the state, with pipe delivered to a few locations in central Ohio and several of the 30 Horizontal Directional Drill (HDD) rigs were beginning to take shape. Trenching and ditching had begun in a few places, though whether the ditch was for the pipe itself or for drainage was unclear. If it was for the pipe itself, this trenching affects a very small percentage of the overall line. However, at the time of flight, there were miles and miles of ROW still covered with downed trees that need to be processed and have stumps removed prior to the progression of construction at those locations.
Clients of Genscape’s Natural Gas Infrastructure Intelligence product received access to the full suite of geolocated aerial images and related conclusions one and a half weeks before Energy Transfer filed an updated construction report with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to confirm that tree felling had been completed. Geolocated images add a wide range of utility to the flights, including specific HDD sites, utility and road crossings, and compression sites easily available for further inspection on demand.
Genscape is supplementing the planned set of monthly flights with a series of on-the-ground cameras to observe work in near-real time at a variety of sites along the pipe project. One monitoring camera on the Clarington Lateral recently observed the arrival of a work crew to the area, while the others watch compressor stations rise from empty fields or heavy machinery dig below a road. Photo sets are delivered to subscribers biweekly with instant alerts from the Infrastructure Intelligence team when major status changes are observed. To learn more about Genscape’s Natural Gas Infrastructure Intelligence, or to request a trial, please click here.