STATION 309: BOLLINGER COUNTY PLANT HELPS DELIVER NATURAL GAS

Joe McLaughlin of Cape Girardeau has been the district manager for almost two years of the Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America's Station 309 near Marble Hill.

This 16-cylinder engine, capable of 7,250 horsepower, is the workhorse of the Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America compressor station near Marble Hill.

The Natural Gas Pipeline Co. facilities of District 309 run through Butler, Stoddard, Bollinger, Cape Girardeau and Perry counties in Southeast Missouri. (MAP)

MARBLE HILL -- From Highway 34 about five miles east of Marble Hill, the complex is barely visible, but as one drives up the lane, a roar can be heard coming from the buildings of the Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America.

That's the hum of industry, moving natural gas through the complex to fuel house furnaces, hot water heaters or commercial heating units on its way to Chicago.

The first building has many pipes along the nearby side while the far side has what looks like large exhaust systems sticking through the walls and turning toward the sky.

Farther along the driveway, several other buildings are visible, most with pipes running through the air and along the ground. A 270-foot microwave tower sits near the office.

The roar of engines -- large ones -- fills the air, says Joe McLaughlin, district manager of Station 309, which sits on the pipeline carrying natural gas from the southern tip of Texas to Chicago.

The first building, with its eight 2,800-horsepower engines compress the natural gas in the pipeline before sending it north.

The seven V-8 engines, made by Cooper-Bessemer, have eight cylinders with 18-inch pistons making 18-inch strokes. The seven engines produce 36,656 cubic inches of gas, enough to fuel 90 automobiles.

The building's last engine, a Worthington in-line 10-cylinder with 16-inch cylinders making a 16-inch stroke, produces 32,180 cubic inches of power.

In the background, a building houses a V-16 Cooper-Bessemer engine able to produce 7,250 horsepower. The engine has 18-inch-diameter pistons and produces 73,312 cubic inches of gas.

Station 309 opened in 1954 as one of about 40 mainline compressor stations the pipeline company owns. The stations are typically about 100 miles apart, McLaughlin says.

This station, which employs 18 people, sits on the company's Gulf Coast System, which was developed in the early 1950s and runs through Southeast Missouri.

Three pipelines run underground into Station 309; two of them are 30 inches in diameter while the third is 36 inches in diameter.

The nine compressor engines, producing 29,650 horsepower, are the heart of the system. The natural gas comes into the station at 400 to 600 pounds per square inch, is compressed and pushed back into the pipeline at 600 to 850 pounds per square inch.

On a typical day, McLaughlin says, the gas might come into the system at 500 pounds per square inch and move out at 750 pounds per square inch.

The booster station has a capacity of moving about 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, McLaughlin says. That's enough to supply 1.6 million homes on a cold day.

"Our responsibility is to keep the gas moving, safely and reliably to market," McLaughlin says. "So when folks turn on that burner, they get their gas."

An important aspect of the job is safety. There are safety requirements from both the Department of Transportation and his company, McLaughlin says.

Station 309 is responsible for pipeline safety, handling maintenance and inspections, from Highway 60 near Fisk north to the Mississippi River. Employees walk the right-of-way annually and a plane flies over the pipeline several times during the year. The inspectors check for evidence of leaks -- such as stunted vegetation -- and signs of new excavation that might cause damage to the line.

McLaughlin says the One Call System is the best way to prevent pipeline accidents. Anyone planning to work near the 150-foot pipeline right of way in Missouri should call 1-800-344-7483 two days in advance to ensure the location of the line, which usually lies about three feet underground, he says.

The Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America is the interstate transmission subsidiary of MidCon Corp., which is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Lombard. MidCon is a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp. of Los Angeles.

As a transmission company in today's market, his pipeline moves natural gas from production areas to distribution customers, which retail the product to its end users, McLaughlin says.

The gas is typically owned by different companies, which pay the pipeline a fee for moving it from one area to another. With increased diversification and less regulation in the natural gas industry, prices move up or down according to supply and demand, he says.

McLaughlin's pipeline serves four gas distribution companies on its way through Southeast Missouri: Associated Natural Gas Co., which handles gas in Jackson, Oak Ridge, Puxico and Doniphan; Union Electric in Marble Hill and Fisk; the city of Perryville, which has its own distribution system; and Joint Utilities in eastern Perry County, which includes Frohna and Altenburg.

The pipeline passes from Wittenberg in eastern Perry County into Illinois at Grand Tower. In 1954, two 30-inch diameter pipelines were built across the Mississippi River above ground. A quarter-mile north of those pipelines, three 30-inch pipelines cross the Mississippi River below ground.

The company's first pipeline, called the Amarillo System, was developed in the 1930s. It runs northeast from west Texas and southeast New Mexico through the Oklahoma Panhandle, the middle of Kansas, the corner of southeast Nebraska and the lower one-third of Iowa from west to east before crossing northern Illinois and ending in the Chicago area.

McLaughlin, a Cape Girardeau resident, has been with the pipeline company for more than 14 years. He received his electrical engineering degree in 1980 from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Before coming to Station 309 in early 1993, he had worked around Texarkana, Ark., and Rockport and Joliet in Illinois.