Rover can start using sections of pipeline

Rover Pipeline can start pumping natural gas through completed sections of the $4.2 billion interstate pipeline.

In a letter Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Rover’s request to start using its 191-mile, 42-inch-diameter mainline from Carroll County to Defiance County. A second mainline is under construction.

FERC also gave Rover permission to use 3.5 miles of 30-inch-diameter pipeline in Harrison County and 18.6 miles of 42-inch-diameter pipeline that connects Harrison County to Carroll County.

In an email, Rover spokeswoman Alexis Daniel said the company was pleased with FERC’s decision and would start flowing gas through the approved sections right away.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer is building the Rover project. When completed, the pipeline will carry 3.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from the Utica and Marcellus shales to users in the Great Lakes, Midwest, Gulf Coast and Canada.

Rover’s twin mainlines will run from southeast Ohio to the northwest part of the state, passing through central Ohio.

Rover had aimed to start using part of the pipeline as early as July.

But the project ran afoul of FERC and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in April when 2 million gallons of diesel-contaminated drilling slurry leaked into a wetland when construction crews drilled a path for one of the mainlines beneath the Tuscarawas River.

Workers later dumped the contaminated slurry in quarries near water wells used by the Canton Water Department and Aqua Ohio.

FERC told Rover in July the company had to remove and properly dispose of the contaminated slurry from the wetland and the quarries before it could use the pipeline.

In Thursday’s letter, FERC said Rover had removed the contaminated slurry from a quarry in northern Tuscarawas County near Beach City and was “proceeding satisfactorily” with a similar cleanup at the Oster Sand and Gravel quarry north of Massillon.

Rover also “substantially completed” the removal of drilling slurry from the wetland, under Ohio EPA monitoring.

Permission to operate the pipeline doesn’t impact an investigation by FERC’s Office of Enforcement into how diesel fuel got into the drilling slurry, according to the letter.

Ohio EPA spokesman James Lee said the agency agreed that Rover had made significant progress with the cleanup, but the agency hadn’t determined the work was complete.

Workers have removed 691 truckloads of contaminated slurry from the Oster quarry and 177 truckloads from the Beach City quarry, Lee said.

The state continues to negotiate with Rover over compensation for multiple environmental violations during pipeline construction. The Ohio EPA has proposed Rover pay a civil penalty of almost $1 million.