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Dakota Access pipeline pictures (lots of pictures)
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Cliff SEIA
Posted 12/5/2016 08:45 (#5677041)
Subject: Dakota Access pipeline pictures (lots of pictures)


The Dakota Access Pipeine has been in the news alot and it crossed our home farm (less than 200' from our shop) and three other rented farms.  The entire project was a first class gig and I can honestly say that they were great to work with and I didn't meet an single worker who wasn't professional, respectful and willing to talk to me about what they were doing and why.  The first crew showed up about August 25th and started putting in their driveways, on August 31st they started pushing the top soil back on us, the right of way was 150' wide and they removed all of the topsoil to one side.  

This is a D6 and a D8 pushing dirt up to a 70,000lb excavator.





A couple of days later the topsoil crews showed up with six excavators and ten D8s, these guys were covering around 10,000 feet per day working 12 hours a day seven days a week.

 



The next crew that showed up was the road bore crew, every gravel road was bored under, the one closest to us crossed the road under a curve which created a bore 360' long and they spent 6 days working on it.  The pipe is about 15' below the surface of the road and the road bores got heavier 5/8" thick pipe instead of the .48" thick pipe used on the rest of the line.  To bore under the road they used a overgrown post hole digger that augered under the road while pushing the pipe through.  On the other side of the road they dug another trench and as the bore pipe exited that side they would cut a section off while welding another section of pipe on the other end until they had worked it all of the way through.  

Here is a video of the road bore.   

The bell hole starting trench for the road bore.



One of the pipes for the road bore, this pipe weight 15,566 lbs and you can see it has a bar code, every pipe is numbered and kept track of where it was buried, if any pipe ever leaks they can locate every other pipe from that batch so they can dig it up and check it.  



Weld on the road bore pipe sections, these were welded with a 6010 rod for the root pass then 8010 rod for the cap passes, every weld that was made by hand was X rayed before being cleaned up, sandblasted and coated.  



Then the pipe showed up, five 80' sticks per semi load and a magnet on an excavator to unload it.  

 



 After that a survey crew came through and numbered each pipe, set stakes to mark their exact position and marked them for bending.  A day or two later the bending crew came through and bent the pipes so they would lay perfectly in the trench for each change of elevation or curve.  Here is a video of the bending crew, on the small bends they would just eyeball it but on the bigger ones they had a laser receiver they put on the end of the pipe that the machine could read off of, some of the pipes were bent in multiple directions for both horizontal and vertical bends.  

The next crew was the pipe alignment crew, they got all the pipes placed in order and up on the cribbing.  They were followed by the welding crew, the long stretches of pipe were welded with automated MIG welders, in each each of these little huts there are two MIG welding guns that ride a track clamped around the pipe.  One of the welder guns would start at the top and work its way down one side of the pipe while the other would start at the top and work its way down the other side.  After the first hut ran the root pass it would move on and the next hut would stop and start on the cap passes.  There was also a bullet that was ran up the inside of the pipe that welded a bead on the inside.  There was no less than 6 weld passes on each joint.  





The welds were visually inspected (couldn't protrude more than 1/8" from the pipe surface) then these guys came through and I forget what they called this camera but it could see through the weld much like an X ray, those pictures are kept on file, referenced to the gps location of the joint and will be kept on file forever.  The weld inspector initialed each weld with a marker that he said would still be readable if they dig the pipe up in 100 years.  





It was a couple weeks later before the trenching crew came, a fleet of 115,000 lb excavtors dug the trench, the top of the pipe is 9-10' below the soil surface.

  

A few days later another fleet of excavators came through and covered the pipe.



Tie in crews were a few days behind them tieing in the long stretches of pipe to the road bores and other short stretches.  



After the pipes were lined up they were marked and then an oxy-acetylene torch was put on a track clamped around the pipe to cut the pipe and it also put a bevel on the cut at the same time.  The joints were cleaned with a grinder then lined up with these clamps.  





Two welders went at the joint at the same time, one started at the top and the other started at the bottom, here is a video of the welders laying the root pass.


After that was done and those holes were backfilled there wasn't much work done for a while except every 3 miles they installed these shut off valves, they can monitor pressure in the pipeline and if there is ever a problem they can remotely shut the entire thing down using these valves.  





This past week they got the topsoil pushed back, cleaned up their driveways and took down their signs.  It was 3 months and 4 days from when they started till they had the ground worked back down.  Before they pushed the topsoil back they ran an inline ripper through the clay to loosen it and after the dozers got done leveling they ran a soil finisher over it to work it down.  Another crew is still following with a bale processor blowing mulch over the area.  





I had most of these pictures in an album on Facebook and it makes me sad now to see that Ray Brunker had commented on several of them.

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