Another investment in Gippsland's future completed

The new pipeline is a vital piece of infrastructure which will help to ensure reliable, affordable gas and petroleum products continue to flow to Australian households and businesses.

The project involved replacing the original 187 kilometre crude oil and condensate pipeline between our Longford and Long Island Point plants.

The real challenge for this project lay in its location, crossing more than 300 individual landowners’ properties. From the start we engaged with landowners to ensure we mitigated potential impacts on their properties. We thank each and every one of them for their patience and understanding as we completed this important work.

The construction teams also went to great lengths to minimise the projects impact on the environment and disruption to the broader community. This included using horizontal directional drilling technology to go under railways, as well as major and minor roads. We also partnered with Conservation Volunteers Australia and Landcare to deliver environmental projects along the pipeline route.

In our many years of operations across Gippsland, Esso has a strong track record of supporting local contractors and suppliers. Overall Australian labour, materials and equipment made up around 90% of the project spend. At its peak, the project employed over 450 people, with many local to Gippsland.

Our construction contractor, Nacap, also engaged a number of local suppliers in the Gippsland region and along the pipeline route, for a variety of products and services.

But it’s more than just the materials and equipment, it’s the flow on indirect benefits to the communities we worked in. It’s the early morning coffees we bought in Warragul, or the comfortable beds our teams slept in Morwell when they were away from home.And we thank you for making us feel at home.

To deliver a project of this magnitude requires the ongoing support of landowners and it has shown us how vital it is that we take the community with us every step. We recognise that there is still some work to do and we’re committed to completing this work as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The fact that this project was delivered ahead of schedule and within budget, and with every effort made to cause minimal disruption to the community, delivers a tremendous boost to our ability to compete for capital investments for future projects.

With continued investment in our operations, we’ll maintain the quality jobs in the region and the flow on benefits to the Gippsland region.