Bill Sagues reports:
Driving to Tampa from Tallahassee and back I saw over a half a dozen of these trucks heading east and south on I-10 east and I-75 south yesterday 8/11/16.
I suppose that could be somebody else’s pipe, but Sabal Trail announced back in November 2014, before it even entered the formal FERC filing process, that it had contracted to buy its pipe from Berg Pipe of Mobile, AL and Panama City, FL. Sabal Trail’s press releases didn’t mention, but Berg’s owner Salzgitter Group even earlier did, that “The two companies in Panama City and Mobile are subsidiaries of EUROPIPE GmbH, Mülheim, Germany, a joint venture of Salzgitter AG and AG der Dillinger Hüttenwerke.” So the pipe purchase profits go to Germany. And even Sabal Trail couldn’t come up with a press release about this for Georgia, because there are no economic benefits to Georgia. Even the temporary pipe jobs in Florida and Alabama are just that: temporary.
Photo: Bill Sagues.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Meanwhile, much of Sabal Trail’s pipe is already sitting in a pipe yard north of Lake City, FL, apparently in cleared and filled wetlands. Despite Sabal Trail’s promise, also back in 2014, to ask FERC for permission before using any pipe yard, they did not do so.
Should we trust this company with our land, water, and air?
-jsq
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What about the 4000+ workers paying local city, county, and state taxes. Not to mention all the revenue from the workers the Local businesses will get.
4000 workers paying local sales tax is a temporary boon to economy offset by myriad of social issues these out of state workers bring with them — drug abuse, crime rates increase, and oh so many more social issues. Where did you get 4000 jobs — at Sabal Trail job fairs they only offered food vendor jobs etc? All big paying welding /pipelining jobs are done by Spectra crews subcontracted out of Texas. They will only be in one place for an estimated month and 1/2 to 2 months.
Again the social and increased crime that accompanies these crews will offset any gain seen from taxes.
Pipe Welding is a highly specialized field, you don’t want just any hack welder doing this. So you are correct about no local Welding jobs created for this project.