Ruby Gas Pipeline

This article is part of the Global Fossil Infrastructure Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor and the Center for Media and Democracy.

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Ruby Gas Pipeline is an operating natural gas pipeline.

Location

The pipeline runs from Opal, Wyoming, to Malin, Oregon.

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Project Details

• Operator: Kinder Morgan Energy Partners
• Current capacity: 1500 Million cubic feet per day
• Proposed capacity: Million cubic feet per day
• Length: 680 miles / 1094 km
• Status: Operating
• Start Year: 2011

Background

Ruby Pipeline, owned and operated by Kinder Morgan, is a 680-mile, 42-inch diameter pipeline system that extends from Wyoming to Oregon providing natural gas supplies from the major Rocky Mountain basins to consumers in California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest. The project began in 2010, and was completed by July 28, 2011. The project, which traverses 368 miles of Federally-owned land, was given a signed Record of Decision and Right-of-Way-Grant by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management.

The pipeline's route meant the project would cross sensitive sagebrush plains and approximately 1,000 various types of waterways. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe attempted to stop the pipeline's construction in the courts due its impact on endangered fish and sacred lands. The 9th Circuit ultimately ruled that the environmental assessment by the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service on the pipeline's effect upon nine listed fish species and five designated critical habitats was improperly conducted. While the court did rule against BLM and the FWS, it said the consequences for Kinder Morgan if the company did not carry out a new conservation plan would fall on FERC and the Bureau of Land Management. Despite the court's ruling, the pipeline continued to run and the Bureau of Land Management ultimately reauthorized the project in 2013. The FWS also conducted a new analysis, which found similar results to its flawed original analysis. Environmentalists were unsatisfied with the Bureau of Land Management's reauthorization and were also critical of Kinder Morgan's lack of mitigation to the environmental damage inflicted on acres of sage grouse habitat along the pipeline route.