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Oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope in 1968. The "slope" is a flat coastal plain lying between the Beaufort Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) and the Brooks Range. The Alyeska Pipeline Service Company was established in 1970 by the pipeline "owner" companies, with responsibility for the design, construction, operation, and maintainence of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, commonly called TAPS. Today, TAPS is owned and operated by a consortium of companies that includes BP Pipelines (Alaska) Inc, ARCO Transportation Alaska Inc., Exxon Pipeline Company, Mobil Alaska Pipeline Company, Amerada Hess Corporation, Phillips Alaska Pipeline Corporation, and Unocal Pipeline Company. Alyeska is an Aleut word
meaning mainland. The first building permits were issued in 1974 -- and haul road construction began. The first pipe was laid in 1975, and the privately financed project cost over $8 billion dollars when it was completed in June 1977. On August 2, 1977 the first tanker full of North Slope crude headed south to the U.S. mainland. We found year-by-year chronology of the 800-mile pipeline saga, on Alyeska's own site, as well as a collection of FAQs and intriguing factoids. A quick glance at the numbers provides a snapshot of the humongous scale of this mega-construction job: - Number of federal and state permits issued:
Over 1300
- Approximately 300 sites were excavated as part of an archeological survey
- Number of soil samples taken during the pre-construction phase: Over 15,000
- Approximately 3 million tons of materials were shipped to Alaska during the entire project
- Number of welds: 42,000 double joints, and 66,000 field girth welds were required
- At peak during 1975, there were over 28,000 Alyeska employees and contractors working on the project.
- Lives lost in incidents directly related to construction: 31
The 48" diameter pipeline is elevated above ground in some locations; elsewhere it is buried between 8 and 16 feet underground. Eleven pump stations push a
maximum of 2 million barrels oil daily at a speed of roughly six miles per hour down to the marine terminal at Valdez. (One barrel=42 gallons). The pipeline crosses three mountain ranges, as well as 34 rivers and streams, including the mighty Yukon. It takes just under a week for oil to travel from the Slope down to the Valdez Marine Terminal on Prince William Sound. Want to keep track of ongoing pipeline environmental impact issues? Visit the TAPS Renewal EIS site, hosted by the Bureau of Land Management in association with a variety of government agencies and national laboratories.
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