By TODD M LINDLEY
After start-up 48 years ago the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) pumped the 19th billion barrel of crude oil into the pipeline on Wednesday September 17th around 1AM.
The 48” diameter 800-mile-long pipeline took three years and two months to construct the pipeline, pump stations, roads and terminal. At peak construction there were over 28,000 contractors and employees working at one time to complete this project. Designing and building the pipeline over mountain ranges, rivers, permafrost and major earthquake fault lines illustrate the fortitude behind this engineering marvel.
In a press release by Alyeska Pipeline President & CEO John Kurz stated, “An often-referenced quote from the TAPS construction era goes, ‘They didn’t know it couldn’t be done.’ In that spirit, this once-implausible milestone for TAPS was made reality by the proud pipeline people at Alyeska Pipeline and our contractors who operate TAPS safely and reliably. This moment also honors countless individuals and organizations that continue adding to the iconic infrastructure’s legacy, as well as Alaska’s residents and leaders and the state’s hardworking oil and gas industry.”
The Trump Administration made Alaska a central part of it’s domestic energy policy. In June, members of the presidential cabinet and administration visited Alaska, including a visit to Pump Station 1 in Prudhoe Bay. They discussed the key role Alaska oil and gas will play in the United States becoming energy dominate with developments like Willow and Pikka on the horizon.
“That work, paired with an environment of support and action from federal and state energy policy leaders, has us focused on TAPS 100 and many more milestones ahead,” says Kurz.
For more information on the press release and about TAPS historic throughput at https://alyeska-pipe.com/historic-throughput/ and TAPS history at https://alyeska-pipe.com/taps-facts/.
Todd Lindley is on the board of Alaska Gold Communications, the parent company of Must Read Alaska.
The pipeline is critical infrastructure. Why a gas line was never built in conjunction with the crude oil pipe is dysfunctional.
Aside from the export value of gas, the Fairbanks urban area and multiple communities adjacent to the corridor should have been benefiting from a reliable and clean burning fuel for decades.
The state government has grown exponentially and unfortunately the vast sums of revenue have been squandered on government and the special interests who purchase the government.
The state should have built roads to connect with our resource base and infrastructure instead of creating a dismal failed education system, and a mass of inefficient government worker and benefit dependent society.
We are overly dependent on military base spending, which amounts to a government welfare dependency. And the vagaries of political influence to keep federal spending on “our” bases. Fought with corrupt kick backs for our federal representatives.
“Special interests who purchase the government” could be the reason for “a gas line was never built”
Was a gas line suggested or pushed by anyone to run along w/ the Pipeline at that time?
If so, the oil companies may have balked at that because they wanted to hurry & get the, big money, oil to market now.
Also this was all happening during the Carter Admin & the Arab ‘oil embargo’ …. so there was that urgency at the time to get the oil to market.
Dear George, Carter didn’t take office until January 1977, 11 months prior to ‘first oil.’ Pipeline political machinations were finalized under Nixon.
Oops! 5 months to first oil.
If we had either competent federal and state “leadership” at some point in the 40+ years there would be a gas line.
It’s very important to remember that there have been NO major spills or environmental problems from the pipeline or it’s related infrastructure. And this despite the loud voices at the start that it would be a disaster, environmentally. (The Exxon Valdez, yes, sadly.) But the pipeline’s construction and operation shows that these large projects can be done safely, and without environmental issues. 48 years of success, too- wonder if the media will cover this aspect?
Alaskan liberals will immediately want to talk about the drunk that shot the Pipeline & put a hole in it.
It was, of course, a very, very minor spill on a small plot of land.
But liberals told me at the time “we knew there would oil spilled onto the environment”
That guy Lewis, who’s families homestead is in Livengood, was a career criminal & sentenced to 16 years.
And of course there was that alcoholic tanker Captain, another miscreant.
The media will not cover the pipeline’s safety record, doesn’t fit the narrative. They cry the oil needs to stay in the ground or we’ll all die. Glad to see Trump has opened up Alaska after the dark years of the Biden executive order shutdowns.
I stood on it at pump station 10 when the first barrel went down the pipe- I was 7 years old then 🙂
Nice.
I remember when the first barrel of oil arrived in Valdez, March of 1977….
Everyone thought we would be building the Gas Line within a year or two…. 🤣
That thought didn’t pan out… Neither has any other project of consequence since 1977…
I remember when Hickel built the Ice road to the North Slope to prove it was accessible by road. There are still
A few scars from that road but he proved that a road and a pipeline could be built. And so it was!
The 70s in Alaska were something else! Money, booze, drugs, and flourishing unions were all available and were the coin of the realm! What a Hay Day it was for us.
I was there at the beginning. Congrats to all who brought this marvel into existence, and to those who keep it going. And above all, thanks to everyone who did all of this with SAFETY foremost in mind. It couldn’t have happened without that.
Like other radical leftists (and other feminists, but I repeat myself), Hans, you have an obsessive focus on safety, aka “safetyism”.
Safety was NOT foremost when building the pipeline, nor can it be when doing or building anything else. If one’s goal is perfect safety, then complete inaction will always be the default choice.
Safety during construction is one thing, but safety in an operating hydrocarbon environment is something completely different. The threat level to people, infrastructure, environment, and billions in income and investment is at a whole different level. It’s clear that you have never worked in the high hazard process industries as I have, where almost everything you do carries the risk for injury, loss to life, and escalation. I’m sure many of the other old timers on this site who have worked in the oil and gas industry, especially on the Slope, will back me up on this. Let’s hear from you, folks. Make Mr. Jefferson understand how wrong he is on this point.
Politics are not a factor when it comes to process safety.
Time for another Covid booster shot, please.
Safety, of course…
If you’re going to comment, please try to say something germane and useful.
Hans, you are both wrong and irrational.
Yes, I have worked in hazardous industries as well. Safety is of course of great importance, but by definition safety cannot be of the GREATEST importance, or there would be no operating industry. The industrial concerns come first, and must come first. To say otherwise is to be a blithering idiot.
Clearly, logic is not your strong suit.
Pipeline was 3 years ….. 70,000 workers …… 32 fatalities.
Today it would be done with very few, and maybe zero.
Hans, I too was lucky enough to have ” been” there. I initially worked for M-K building a section of the Dalton Highway near Toolik. Following that we built the Pipeline.
It was an amazing project and proved the critics wrong about developments of its size and scope.
AND don’t forget our Permanent Fund from oil revenue was supposed to benefit ALL Alaskans because the resource belongs to Alaska first. We pushed for the industry to be successful and safe because we had a stake in it but the minute Jay Hammond passed away the grifters in the legislature couldn’t wait to get their hands on our money and slowly stole large chunks. While the oil industry thrives and the fund grows like crazy we get tossed a few coins. If Alaskan’s don’t vote these people out of office I guess we deserve it but the deck is stacked against us with all the outside money pouring into campaigns. We have to hold the grifters in office accountable and vote them out.
Well said Frozen.
Yup.
Our corrupt political class.
This pipeline has been the lifeline for the State of Alaska and Alaska North Slope Crude has been its life’s blood. Revenue from royalties has, since its inception, provided 80 to 90% of the operating revenue for this state, along with providing a yearly stipend (permanent fund dividend) for all its citizens.
19 billion barrels have passed through it since it opened in in 1978. Production has slowed way down since the early days when they were pushing 2 1/2 to 3 million barrels per day. These days it’s more on the order of a few hundred thousand barrels per day.
In the early nineties, probably about 1992, when I was Master of the M/T Overseas Boston, a 900 ft. Tanker with 1.2 million barrels cargo capacity, I was presented a plaque for the ship for carrying the 11 billionth barrel out of Vadez. So from 1978 to 1992, roughly 14 years, 11 billion barrels flowed through the pipeline. It took another 33 years, from 1992 until now, 2025 to throughput another 8 billion barrels. So you can see, production has slowed way down and consequently, so has the revenue to the State.
The State had managed to hang on to a small portion of that revenue for the benefit of future generations but for the most part they blew it on all manner of harebrained and counter productive schemes. They’ve probably done about as much harm with the money as they’ve done good. Maybe more.
One of these days, the oil will flow no more, I wonder how many people will be left here after that reality sets in?
Construction of the pipeline started the downfall of Fairbanks and Anchorage and both have continued downhill since then.
Vernon Adkison taught me a more Broad understanding of the pipeline situation & shipping in the far North, right on, mate.
It doesn’t seem long ago that my boss Ernie Colley in BP threw a thin file on my desk and said. “ they have found oil in Alaska. Shipping it out is your problem”
Retaining natural gas in the Prudhoe Bay reservoir and reinjecting trillions of cubic feet of produced gas allowed the producers to recover several billion barrels of additional oil. That additional oil has been worth more than North Slope gas sales could have been. The retained gas still helps recover more oil now.
Secondly the gas is still in the reservoir today.
Right.
You have to remember the gas was used to provide drive and pumped back into the producing layer.
If you want to look up something interesting look up The Pluto project it was a pipeline that was built right after our troops hit the Normandy beach it took 9 days to cross the English Channel
Thank You, I had forgotten about that.