Underground Construction - March 2021 - 15

any previously constructed. Meanwhile, Shell Oil Co. was having
one of the country's largest brackish source-water supply systems
constructed to serve 45 waterflood units in West Texas.
The largest project that year was Northern Natural Gas Co.'s
construction of a $30-million, 365- mile, 26-inch line from gas
fields near Kermit, Texas, to connect with its main line near
Beaver, Okla. With already-pending applications for 700 miles
of line connecting its system to 50 communities in Michigan,
Minnesota and Wisconsin, the company had a total of
$80 million in new facilities.
In 1965, Halvorson & Lentz Construction Co., of Seattle,
won a contract for 12.4 miles of 6- and 8-inch pipeline across the
Grand Canyon that was estimated to need about 2,000 bends.

International involvement
Although focused on the North American underground
construction industry, Pipeline Construction also reported
on significant influences and involvement of the booming
international market.
Projects included the 1960 completion of Britain's longest
crude pipeline. More than 10,000, 25-foot lengths of 18-inch
steel pipe were capable of carrying 5 million tons of crude
per year some 60 miles across South Wales linking British
Petroleum's tanker terminal near Angle Bay, Milford Haven,
with its Llandarcy refinery.
That same year, work was scheduled to start in Russia
on the world's longest pipeline: a 2,790-mile line extending
from central Russia, through the Ukraine and into Byelorussia,

World's deepest tie-in was completed
in the Gulf of Mexico using a special
underwater split sleeve coupling
Fully automatic inert gas welding unit
introduced by Thomas Contracting
Co., Houston.
Pipeline surveying took to the air
when engineers, under the aegis of the
U.S. Geological Survey, created the
ABC (Airborne Control) System.

1964
H. C. Price Jr. of Bartlesville, Okla., and
United Bredero N.V., of The Netherlands,
opened a coating plant in The Hague.

where it divided into East Germany, and Hungary and
Czechoslovakia. Until its completion in 1963, the longest
oil pipeline in the world was the 20-inch, 1,475-mile
Texas-New York " Little Inch. "
The world's longest, continuous underwater pipeline pull
occurred in 1961 during construction of a 99-mile, 30-inch
pipeline to deliver crude from Iran's Gach Saran oil field to
sea-loading platforms in the Persian Gulf. The 19-mile
underwater section was built by International Marine
Construction, C.A., using specialized equipment and personnel
under an agreement with Collins Construction Co. of
Port Lavaca, Texas.
In 1963, Pipeline Construction reported on the South European
Pipeline, a 500-mile, 34-inch crude line extending from the
oil port of Lavera, near Marseilles, to a new refinery near the
French/ German border. The line increased France's existing
pipeline network by 25 percent.
Pacific Corporation Ltd. completed Australia's first crude oil
line - a 190-mile-long, 10-inch-diameter pipeline from the
15-well Moonie Field to a terminal at Lytton, near Brisbane.
The next year, bids were being taken on building the
869-mile, large-diameter line to tap reserves in Holland's
Groningen field. Within weeks of the announcement,
H. C. Price Jr. of Bartlesville, Okla, and United Bredero N.V., of
The Netherlands, formed a company to coat and wrap pipe
for European clients and opened a coating plant in The Hague.
Construction launched in 1965 on a record-setting, 40-inchdiameter, 2,123-mile steel pipeline to carry gas from Central

J.J. Case Corporation filed a patent
for the first extendible boom and
introduced the first over-center
backhoe design.

1967

Martin Cherrington created
the first HDD rig.

1969

1965
Construction of 12.4 miles of
6- and 8-inch pipeline across the
Grand Canyon was estimated
to need about 2,000 bends.

First pre-stressed cryogenic offshore
pipeline was built in Maine.

Construction by year- and decade-end:
* 7,332 miles of crude oil pipeline
* 1,851,000 miles of natural gas
distribution pipeline

1966
New rock-boring equipment reduced
costs for road crossings in rock
formation by approximately one half.

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Underground Construction - March 2021

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