Who’s Going to Drill Under the Snake River by Burbank, And Why?

Did you know there's a pipeline that runs under the Snake River near the Highway 12 bridge?  It's in the circled area in this photo.

  Marathon Oil plans to replace the line soon.

The six-inch diameter line runs under the Snake River mud,  just south of the Vaughn Hubbard Highway 12 bridge that takes drivers from Pasc ot Burbank.

Marathon's $2.2 million dollar project will drill down about 54 below the bed of the river, then horizontally across the river, and eventually tie into the tank farm on the Pasco side.

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The total length of the pipeline will be 2,355 feet. They will be using a technique known as horizontal directional drilling. 

According to records kept by the various petroleum companies that have operated the Burbank and Pasco sites, pipelines have gone under the river as far back as the 1950s.

For years, fuel and other pipelines are often laid underneath riverbeds when crossing water, because it reduces the chance they will be damaged by any activity in the river, and it minimizes impacts from water and weather-related conditions.