Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS)
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is a crucial infrastructure project running approximately 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay, where North America's largest oil field was discovered in 1967, to the port of Valdez. Constructed in the 1970s, the pipeline was designed to transport crude oil through challenging Arctic conditions and has played a significant role in reducing U.S. dependence on imported oil. The project faced considerable political and environmental opposition, particularly from Alaska Natives and environmental groups concerned about ecological impacts, leading to legal and regulatory hurdles that delayed construction. TAPS was completed in 1977 and initially transported over a million barrels of oil per day, significantly contributing to the energy landscape of the United States.
Over the decades, the pipeline has experienced spills and maintenance challenges, including a notable decline in the flow rate due to the depletion of North Slope oil reserves and deterioration of the infrastructure. Technological upgrades, such as spill-detection systems and increased maintenance efforts, have been implemented to address these issues. As of 2018, the future viability of TAPS is contingent on continued exploration and production of Arctic oil, highlighting the evolving dynamics of energy resources in the region. This overview underscores the pipeline's significance in both historical and contemporary contexts, reflecting the complex interplay of economic, environmental, and social factors surrounding oil production in Alaska.
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Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS)
- DATE: Congress authorized construction in November 1973; construction began April 1974; pipeline completed in 1977
The plan to construct a trans-Alaskan oil pipeline network generated considerable controversy. After completion, the pipeline, a triumph of engineering, helped lower US dependency on imported oil during the 1980s.
Background
The Naval Petroleum Reserve was created on the North Slope of Alaska in 1923, but for two decades, the exploratory wells drilled there came up dry. Moreover, the cost of commercial drilling in Alaska appeared prohibitive. From the 1930s to the 1950s, oil was cheap, and interest in Alaska’s unproven reserves plummeted.
During the 1960s, the increasing price of oil and the possibility of a decline in the security of oil supplied from abroad combined to revive interest in Alaska’s oil possibilities. The Atlantic Richfield Company (later ARCO) obtained the majority of the government leases granted for exploratory and developmental activity in Alaska. On December 26, 1967, in temperatures 30 degrees Celsius below zero, ARCO struck oil and discovered the largest oil field ever found in North America, estimated at a minimum of 9.6 billion barrels.
Huge technological challenges had to be overcome, including obtaining the oil in volume in the subzero temperatures of Alaska’s north slope and transporting it safely to the port of Valdez in the south of Alaska for shipment by tankers to California. Construction of a mammoth, 800-mile (1,287-kilometer) pipeline seemed to be the only way to transport the oil across the frozen tundra.
The political obstacles to transporting the oil proved even more challenging. Alaska Natives objected because the pipeline would cross lands to which they had still had claims. Environmentalists, meanwhile, feared that the pipeline would do irrevocable damage to Alaska’s ecological systems. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was passed after the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, gave environmentalists the leverage they needed to oppose the pipeline’s construction. When the Department of the Interior tried to satisfy the NEPA requirements by filing a slight eight-page environmental impact statement, the Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Defense Fund obtained a court injunction on April 13, 1970, which halted construction of the pipeline until a definitive court ruling on compliance with NEPA could be obtained.
Work on the pipeline was suspended for nearly four years as proponents and opponents battled in the bureaucracy and the courts. Land claims were sorted out partly through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. Then came the October 1973, Yom Kippur War, the Arab oil embargo on Western countries assisting Israel, and the quadrupling of the price of imported oil to nearly twelve dollars per barrel. A month later, on November 16, 1973, Congress relieved the Department of the Interior of further obligations under NEPA and approved the construction of a nearly $10 billion trans-Alaska pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. In April 1974, ARCO, in the eight-member Alyeska consortium of oil companies, began the monumental task of constructing a pipeline that would not be environmentally disruptive. Tens of thousands of workers flocked to Fairbanks and Valdez.
Impact on Resource Use
The pipeline was completed in 1977, with more than half its length above ground because of the permafrost, and within a year it was carrying one million barrels of oil per day to Valdez. By the early 1980s, the amount being transported had doubled, reducing the US appetite for imported oil. The opening of the Alaska pipeline came too late to prevent a second oil crisis in 1979 from driving the price of imported oil to more than thirty-six dollars per barrel but not too late to contribute to the general decline in Western demand for Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil during the 1980s. During that decade, OPEC lost control over the production rates of member states and was unable to prevent the price of oil from plummeting before restabilizing in the 1990s at approximately twenty dollars per barrel.
Spills and leaks have also affected the Alaska pipeline production. Between its opening and 1990, the pipeline lost some 300,000 gallons (7,143 barrels) of crude oil to spills. In the 1990s, spill-detection sensors and alarms were added, as were a line volume balance system and advanced computer modeling. In 2006, oil prices spiked again when the Department of Transportation insisted the Alaska pipeline be examined after an oil spill that leaked nearly 6,290 barrels. Upon inspection conducted by British Petroleum (BP), the pipeline was found to have a high level of corrosion, forcing BP to replace nearly 26 kilometers of pipeline and causing a temporary shutdown of service.
Over time, as North Slope wells dried up, the Alaska pipeline flow rate declined dramatically, from 2.1 million barrels of oil per day in 1988 to 518,000 barrels per day in 2016. By 2020, these rates had dropped to 480,199 barrels per day. However, new developments and discoveries resulted in more oil. In the 2022 calendar year, the pipeline shipped 176.4 million barrels of oil, averaging roughly 483,415 barrels per day. These totals were higher than both 2020 and 2021, showing a potential reversal of the previous downward trend.
Bibliography
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