Enbridge's Great Lakes to Gulf Coast series (Part 4)
Bob Schoneberger has grown up with Enbridge, and Enbridge has grown up with the likes of Bob Schoneberger.
“I remember growing up in Bemidji, when Lakehead Pipe Line Company (the former name of Enbridge’s U.S. affiliate) came through town,” says Schoneberger, president of United Piping Inc., a thriving pipeline construction outfit based in Duluth, Minn.
“I knew a bunch of people who worked for Lakehead . . . I just didn’t know I was going to end up doing the same thing later on.”
With an authentic Schlitz rummage-sale clock on his office shelf, and a degree from the University of North Dakota on his resume, Schoneberger is an Upper Midwest fella through and through. Enbridge, similarly, has roots in the region that stretch back to 1950 – when our original pipeline, then known as Line 1, arrived in Superior, Wis., after starting life more than 1,000 miles away in Edmonton, Canada.
Today, Enbridge has a workforce of more than 830 people in the Twin Ports of Superior and Duluth, which sit cheek-by-jowl on the far western shores of Lake Superior.
Many more, including contractors with the likes of United Piping and Lake Superior Consulting, a Duluth-based engineering firm, work on Enbridge projects in the region.
“Enbridge has become quite a corporate citizen. Having your president (Al Monaco) speak at our Duluth Chamber of Commerce annual dinner (in October), I think, is a good example of Enbridge’s commitment to this community,” says Phil Powers, president and managing director of LSC.
“And one of the more compelling comments he made was about how Enbridge struggles to get people to move from this area to other locations – which I think is a neat testament to the Twin Ports.”
Together, the recent opening of Enbridge’s $2.8-billion Flanagan South pipeline and the twinning of the Seaway Pipeline represent North America’s first large-volume, full-path solution for safely and reliably delivering Western Canadian crude to the heavy-oil-hungry refining market in the Houston area.
At the same time, we’re also moving ahead with expansion projects in the Upper Midwest, as we continue to build out much-needed pipeline infrastructure across the continent.
In Wisconsin and Illinois, projects such as the Line 61 Upgrade and Superior Terminal expansion are on tap. And in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, we’re making a $5-billion investment in new or improved pipeline systems – including Sandpiper, the Line 3 Replacement Project, and the Line 67 Upgrade Project.
LSC’s engineers and project managers have worked on various Enbridge projects since 2004; more than 50 LSC staff were devoted to our just-completed $2.8-billion Flanagan South pipeline that runs from Pontiac, Ill., to Cushing, Okla.
“Since 2004, Enbridge has hired about 110 LSC employees, as well as another 220 focused on Enbridge projects . . . and the impressive part is that for every LSC person Enbridge hired, we’ve employed two more,” says Powers.
Meanwhile, nearly all of United Piping’s workforce is assigned to Enbridge projects, including Line 61 and Superior Terminal, says Schoneberger, himself a former pipeliner with Enbridge from 1989 through 1997. That workforce peaked this past summer at about 400.
“It’s important to me personally for us to be an important part of the community, wherever our projects take us,” he says. “We’re ambassadors for our company, and ambassadors for the people we work for.”
