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Checks carried out and ground planted at speed after huge steel snakes to bring Norwegian gas from coast buried
Chris Benfield
There have been bigger civil engineering projects, but not many that you could watch in progress from the top deck of buses across Yorkshire.
Many of us have had a glimpse of one of the sections of gas pipeline which have been snaking west, since April 1, from Pannal, near Harrogate, and Ganstead, just north-east of Hull - but not for long. The speed at which these huge steel snakes are nowadays made, buried and planted over, is a reminder of the power of technology.
In the 200 years since coal gas was first fed through hollowed wood to a line of street lamps in London, pipeline construction has become
a science at the heart of modern economics.
Already the Pannal line is at Skipton, more than half way to its destination at Nether Kellett, near Carnforth, on the other side of the Pennines; and the team that started at the Hull end can see its destination at Asselby, near Goole, on a clear day.
They have been completing nearly four kilometres a week each. And that is to triple-checked standards based on the expectation of 60 years of use.
Could our leaky water companies hit the same stand-ards? They could, but it costs something like [Pounds]1,000 a yard.
One of the secrets of the speedy progress is planning. It took two years in the office...