|
| |
About half the trans-Alaska oil pipeline is
above ground, a drastic change in Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s original plan
of only about one-sixth outside the ground. Photo
courtesy of Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.
25th Anniversary of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.
The trans-Alaska oil pipeline cost $8 billion and runs 800 miles across some of
the roughest terrain known to man.
By Melissa Campbell
The task had never been done before, nor since . . .
String a 48-inch diameter steel pipe 800 miles from the top of the world in
Prudhoe Bay to the world’s northernmost ice-free port in Valdez–around
mountains, through rivers and across about a dozen distinct, challenging
geological regions.
The Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. was formed to design, build and operate this
trans-Alaska oil pipeline; to ensure the oil flowed smoothly and within a
reasonable budget. This year, Alyeska celebrates 25 years of managing the
transportation of oil through the pipeline.
Alyeska is a consortium of six oil companies: BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.,
ExxonMobil Alaska, Amerada Hess, Phillips Alaska, Williams Alaska and Unocal.
It took nearly a decade from the time oil was discovered on March 13, 1968,
until it flowed into Valdez on June 20, 1977. The oil companies decided in
October 1968 to build the pipeline, and the first pipe arrived late the next
year. All but about one-sixth of the 800 miles would be buried underground,
initial plans said.
“Everyone thought it would be pretty straightforward,” said Elden Johnson, who
helped design and build the pipeline and is currently the head of Alyeska’s
systems integration engineering department. “When oil was discovered, the
companies bought the pipe and at that time hadn’t really thought much about the
design. But we were doing something for the very first time. It was like going
to the moon: you don’t know what you’re going to encounter.”
It was a tumultuous time in the world. In 1968, both Sen. Robert Kennedy and
Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. A liberal mood in the country was
evolving rapidly, giving new life to the civil rights movement and new strength
to protests against the Vietnam War. That mood also invigorated the
environmentalist movement, which would clash eventually head on with efforts to
pump oil out of U.S. soil.
Alaska had been working to settle claims to land it had been promised from the
federal government at the time of statehood. One of the first sites chosen was
in Prudhoe Bay, an area where oil seepages had been seen for years and an area
the state believed could yield profitable land leases.
But U.S. Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall ruled that Alaska Natives had claim
to traditional lands–some of which the state claimed–and halted the state’s land
selection process. The pipeline wouldn’t happen until Native land claims were
settled.
“The Native claims were a big hurdle to get through,” said Jack Roderick, former
Alyeska consultant and author of “Crude Dreams: A Personal History of Oil and
Politics in Alaska.” “Then environmental groups filed lawsuits. It took an act
of Congress to resolve that issue.”
Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969. Debates over the
act raised questions about whether drilling should even be allowed on the North
Slope, Roderick said.
In the meantime, Alaskan oil workers were struggling. Little exploration was
being done, employment in the industry was down and businesses that had borrowed
heavily in anticipation of the pipeline were going bankrupt.
In 1970, seven oil companies formed Alyeska. Even before the rights-of-way were
settled, work had started on the roads and pump stations along parts of the
pipeline route.
Both within and outside the political process, oil companies had been working
with Native leaders to help settle land disputes between Natives and the state.
In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed.
In 1973, the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War was under way. Later that year, the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, declared an embargo on
the shipment of oil to the countries that supported Israel in a recent conflict
with Egypt. Gasoline prices in the United States nearly doubled, and the country
needed a new supply of oil. Americans looked to Alaska.
On Nov. 16, 1973, five years after North Slope oil had been found, Congress
approved pipeline construction by one vote. (That vote was cast by Vice
President Spiro Agnew.)
Construction
One of the first obstacles Alyeska construction crews faced was permafrost, then
a relatively unknown phenomena. Alyeska’s Johnson, fresh out of college in 1973,
was supposed to be the company’s expert on permafrost, being a soils expert.
Trouble was, he’d never actually seen the really frozen soil before.
“I remember coming to Alaska and driving up the road cut to the Yukon River
bridge,” he said. “I looked up to the hillside, which was vertical, it was
melting and had a horrible smell. I picked up this piece of rock that was lying
on the road and put it in my truck. Ten minutes later, it was nothing but a pool
of mud.
“That was my first permafrost experience. Here I was thinking I knew all about
it, but I had never seen it in action,” he added. “It was the dawn of permafrost
engineering for me.”
Alyeska’s engineers decided it wouldn’t be prudent to run 165-degree oil though
a pipe that is buried in frozen soil. That forced the designers to chuck the
idea of burying nearly all the pipeline. But it could work for about half the
line, Johnson figured. The challenge would be to determine where.
Engineers divided the route into about eight distinctive zones, representing the
separate soils and geophysical attributes.
“Each area had different kinds of problems associated with it,” Johnson said.
“We looked at one bore hole at a time; that made it a manageable deal. If you
looked at the whole thing, you’d have been overwhelmed.”
The North Slope was perhaps the most straightforward region, he said. They could
count on the ground being frozen deep down.
As crews made their way further south, however, the ground got more
unpredictable. In some areas, the frost wasn’t as deep as originally predicted.
Or it occurred sporadically, in blotches here and there. Design changes
sometimes had to be made on the spot.
“Taking a 48-inch pipeline from below ground to above ground within a tight
construction schedule was an extreme problem,” he said. “And then there was the
logistics, the oversight from Congress and environmentalists.
“But we did it. It was built well because of the oversight, and that kept
everybody honest.”
The project, originally estimated at $800 million, cost $8 billion.
“The stakes were so high to get the pipeline going to start paying off that
tremendous debt,” Johnson said.
The first section of pipe was laid March 27, 1975, and the final weld occurred
just more than two years later. America’s relationship with the Arab Nations was
still poor. Oil shortages meant long lines and high prices at the nation’s gas
stations.
The Pipeline Days
On June 20, 1977, the first oil flowed from Pump Station 1, near Prudhoe Bay.
Alyeska crews traveled with the oil during that first run, tweaking valves and
watching pigs (measurement devices inside the pipe) along the way. Three weeks
into the maiden journey of oil to Valdez, an explosion and subsequent fire
destroyed Pump Station 8, just outside of Fairbanks. One crewman died.
On July 29, the first oil reached the marine terminal in Valdez. On Aug. 1, the
tanker Arco Juneau sailed out into the Gulf of Alaska with the state’s first
crude headed to market.
More than 13 billion barrels of oil have passed through the pipeline since that
first trip, and in the process has added billions of dollars to the state’s
economy, infrastructure and job rolls.
At its peak, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline has moved 2 million barrels of oil a
day from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. Now the daily flow is about 1 million barrels a
day.
Overall, Alyeska has done its job, said John Devens, head of the Prince William
Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council. The council is an independent group
mandated by Congress after the Exxon Valdez oil spill and funded by Alyeska and
the oil industry to serve as a citizen watchdog over the service company.
Devens admits there have been some big mistakes. Over the last 25 years, there
have been a few major spills, the worst of which was in 1989, when the tanker
Exxon Valdez. ran aground on Bligh Reef, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into
Prince William Sound.
“In 1989, we all got complacent,” said Devens, who was the Valdez mayor at the
time of the spill. “We didn’t have contingency plans, didn’t have equipment to
get out. We all dropped the ball: citizens, companies and the government.”
Alyeska issued a quicker response recently after a man shot a hole in the
pipeline near Livengood, which spilled 285,000 gallons.
Last April, Alyeska laid off 300 staff and contract workers, and had planned to
reorganize its offices in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Valdez. That raises safety
concerns, Devens said. But the Prince William Sound RCAC meets with Alyeska
executives quarterly to air out concerns about the environment or operations.
“They’re under constant pressure to cut costs and work better,” he said. “They
have provided a major part of the tax base for a number of years now. When you
have development, you have negative things that come with the positive. There
has to be tradeoffs.”
For Johnson, the tradeoff is a bit more personal. For the months spent building
the pipeline in Alaska–fighting the swarms of bugs and dodging hungry bears–he
helped build a little bit of history.
“I think the true ramifications of working on the pipeline only now have hit me.
Now that I’m older and wiser,” he said. “The owners of the pipeline have created
tremendous profits and rewards, and it’s something that can be maintained
indefinitely. That’s a feeling of accomplishment.”
|
