Two other people operating on the Keystone XL pipeline tested positive for coronavirus in northern Montana, however, the company said Thursday that paints on the structure on the disputed allocation would continue after the transient closure of a pipeline garage site.
Calgary-based TC Energy said the first at Phillips County Pipeline Yard tested positive for a local clinic on July 28, Yellowstone Public Radio reported. Tests on six contacts close to the inflamed user discovered a moment with the virus.
Native American tribes and others along the 1,930-kilometer pipeline direction expressed fear that staff could simply introduce the virus into rural communities that cannot handle a primary epidemic.
The inflamed staff was quarantined and is expected to return to the garage yard, where the structure is expected to be completed in the coming days, corporate spokesman Terry Cunha said.
The work was not interrupted anywhere else along the route, adding paintings on the site of painters’ camps in Baker, Montana and Philip, South Dakota and 8 pumping stations in Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota.
“We continue with security protocols and there are no other instances to report,” Cunha said.
The structure of the pumping station does not come with the installation of a pipe. This is blocked due to a court ruling invalidating a permit for the loads of rivers, wetlands and other bodies of water that Keystone XL would cross between Hardisty, Alberta, Canada and Steel City, Nebraska.
TC Energy negotiated a plan this spring with Montana fitness officers to minimize the virus threat, adding that they checked others in the gym for fever. Opponents of the pipeline said the measures were insufficient.
The proposed assignment more than a decade ago, but stalled for years until President Donald Trump reversed the Obama administration’s rejection of the allocation. Its value has increased to more than $9 billion, according to the company’s recent regulatory filings.
First, the company planned to build 11 camps that would house up to 1,000 employees each along the direction of the pipeline: six in Montana, 4 in South Dakota, and one in Nebraska.
The construction of the maximum of the camps was postponed for now due to the court’s ruling on river crossings, Cunha said, and it is not clear that all camps will be built after the arrival of the pandemic.