This pipeline travels from Brooklyn, in Melbourne's outer suburbs, to Lara, near Geelong in Victoria.

Apart from the pipeline itself, the system includes:

• Inlet facilities at Brooklyn which include a regulator station between the pipeline and the 7.39MPa system, an additional regulator run on the existing Brooklyn City Gate and a scraper launcher;
  
• intermediate facilities including four remotely actuated mainline valves, two branch valves and a cathodic protection system;
• a connection to the South West Pipeline (Lara to Iona), at Lara City Gate

The alignment is through a mix of industrial, rural living and open grazing land, mainly with rocky, basaltic subsoils overlain by clay-based topsoils.

Construction is very challenging with four major water, two freeway and one railway crossing. The majority of the alignment is through very hard basalt rock.

Open trenching is used for most of the distance with boring under sealed roads and the railway crossing. HDD is being used to cross the environmentally sensitive Hovell Creek.

Up to 40 excavators were working on the pipeline at any one time. Approximately 4kms of the pipeline is being constructed in conjunction with the Deer Park Bypass Freeway construction.

Construction commenced in early October 2007 and is planned to be completed by late March/early April 2008.

A substantial section of the pipeline is constructed and it is planned for sections of the pipeline to be tested in March 2008.


Photo courtesy of Pipeliner magazine.