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Over the past two years, BNSF Railway Co.’s economic development team worked with shippers to locate hundreds of new facilities or prompt plant expansions across the Class I’s network, generating $1.7 billion in new investments and 4,400 new jobs, BNSF officials said in a prepared statement.
 
Last year, the railroad attracted 172 new or expanded facilities worth $1.1 billion and involving 2,130 new jobs. The projects included wind power plants in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico; wheat, corn and fertilizer facilities from Washington to Iowa, Kansas and Texas; ethanol plants in Montana, California, Texas and Kansas; and various sand, steel, paper, and plastics facilities.

In addition, due to growing demand for crude oil from the Bakken Shale, the economic development team last year helped customers locate six new facilities for oil and gas operations, and several new or expanded facilities for inbound drilling material, BNSF officials said.

Currently, 373 industrial development projects are under development on the Class I’s network worth an estimated $5.3 billion that pose the potential to create more than 9,600 jobs, they said.