WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Workers routinely search the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, which is plagued by corrosion, for corroded patches and stress fractures to repair. Thawing permafrost, possibly an effect of global warming, has shifted some of the vertical supports that suspend the pipeline above the earth. Some experts say the pipeline has started to exhaust its life span; others say it was designed to last forever.
Many experts remain optimistic as to the longevity of the pipeline. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. Director Steve Jones said, "The pipeline is currently viable for another 30 years, just based on stuff you could produce today, and not opening up any other areas."
Atlantic Richfield Company and Humble Oil (now Exxon) confirmed the presence of a vast oil field at Prudhoe Bay in 1968. Despite protest from environmental groups, plans were underway to construct a pipeline within a year. On November 16, 1973, presidential approval of pipeline legislation provided the go-ahead to begin constructing a 360-mile distance pipeline from the Yukon River to Prudhoe Bay. A road was constructed for transporting equipment and materials.
The $8 billion, 48-inch diameter, 800-mile-long Trans Alaska Pipeline System is one of the largest pipeline systems in the world, stretching from the Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope, through rugged and beautiful terrain, to Valdez, the northernmost ice-free port in North America. Since construction began in 1969, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the operator of the pipeline, has successfully transported over 14 billion barrels of oil. The pipeline's maximum average daily output is 2.136 million barrels and could account for approximately 25 percent of America's oil production. The pipeline is elevated above ground ranging from about 30 miles in length to a few hundred feet while the remainder is buried underground.
Alyeska's initial owners, consisting of eight companies, were granted a 30-year right-of-way lease from the U.S. government in 1974 to build and operate over the 376 miles of federal lands that the line crosses.
The Trans-Alaskan pipeline has seen more than 13 billion barrels of oil since it opened in 1977. The 1980s saw pipeline peak production with two million barrels per day; the pipeline today produces over one million barrels per day, almost a fifth of America's domestically produced oil. The tanker "ARCO Juneau" reached Valdez with a billionth barrel with the first load of North Slope crude oil on January 16, 1980. In November 1997, the 12-billionth barrel of oil reached Valdez.
The pipeline is one of the largest construction projects ever completed as well as the most controversial. In 2001, President George W. Bush promoted new oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while environmentalists campaigned to maintain the area's wilderness intact. When the pipeline was being built 30 years ago, environmentalists were making many of the same pleas, yet the wildlife receives no danger of extinction as a result of the pipeline. Oil extraction in the ANWR section occurs on only about one one-hundredth of one percent of the refuge's total acreage.
Reserves from the North Slope are sufficient to keep the pipeline busy for years. The pipeline would have enough oil for decades had Congress yielded to President Bush's desire to open the Arctic refuge to drilling.
The pipeline is corroding. There are 78,000 vertical pilings supporting the line that also need to be maintained. Environmental groups and some current and former pipeline workers stressed that the pipeline's relatively good safety record may not be sustained for long. "With proper maintenance, yes, the pipeline could last forever," said Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility Executive Director Ross Coen, adding, "But are they really willing to spend billions of dollars for maintenance when there may not be all that much oil left to send down the pipeline?"
Employees added, "It won't be a single gasket, or valve, or wire, or procedure, or person that will cause the catastrophe. It will be a combination of small, perhaps seemingly inconsequential events and conditions that will lead to the accident that we're all dreading and powerless to prevent."
Though some engineers said the pipeline could operate for 25 to 30 years, Alyeska representatives said that there is no reason to impose such a deadline. "Bit by bit, piece by piece, we can maintain it virtually forever," said Elden Johnson, an engineer on the pipeline and one of its designers told the New York Times in March 2002.
Oil pumped from the pipeline is first stored in the 18 crude concrete dike oil storage tanks, which are 250 feet in diameter, 62 feet, 3 inches with a capacity of 510,000 barrels each for a total of 9.18 million barrels. Oil is then loaded aboard tankers at the Valdez terminal, a 1,000-acre site built on the northernmost ice-free port in the United States, providing a deep-water channel.
Today only six of the original ten pump stations are being used to move oil through the line. Production of oil on the North Slope has been declining because of the age of the oil fields, thereby reducing the amount of throughput of oil in the line, and thus requiring fewer pump stations.
The pipeline is routinely shut down for scheduled maintenance projects. Alyeska conducts line-wide shutdowns approximately every year to continually renew, maintain and improve the system to ensure the integrity and longevity of the pipeline. On July 11, the trans-Alaska pipeline was temporarily suspended for approximately 30 hours for a scheduled maintenance. The stoppage of oil flow did not affect west coast oil delivery; shipping vessels continued to load oil from storage tanks located on the marine terminal throughout the shutdown period. A second shutdown is expected to occur on August 16-17.
