OIL: Alaska's Line Starts Piping

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Priced at $9 billion, the Alaska oil pipeline is the most expensive privately financed construction project in history. In keeping with its grandeur and technical sophistication, it has produced unprecedented engineering, financial, environmental and legal headaches. Not all have been alleviated; surprisingly, in view of the U.S. energy pinch, the pipeline's operators are most uncertain where they can market all the oil that the line will transport (there has even been talk of shipping some to Japan). Nonetheless, this week—nearly a decade after the project's conception and more than three years after construction started—the Alaska pipeline begins carrying its first oil through nearly 800 miles of forbidding wilderness, from Prudhoe Bay north of the Arctic Circle to the warm-water port of Valdez, which is 120 miles east of Anchorage.

It will be a slow, carefully monitored journey. First, 6 million cu. ft. of nitrogen will be blown through the pipeline to purge air from the system, reducing the threat of oil-vapor explosions. Next, a cylindrical plug, called a "pig," will be shoved into the line. Finally, after a signal from Valdez, workmen will open valves at Prudhoe, allowing long-capped crude to fill the line behind the pig. The moving oil will push the pig through the 48-in.-diameter steel pipe at 1 m.p.h. As it goes, the cylinder will shove out of the pipe any refuse that may be contained (for example, tools left behind by forgetful workmen) and emit beeps indicating its location. Eight pumping stations will help the oil push the pig along, and walking inspection crews will escort the cylinder, monitoring its signals.

The oil will pass over or under 800 streams and rivers, including the Yukon. It will rise 4,800 ft. into the Brooks Mountain Range, swoop down east of Fairbanks, rise 3,300 ft. in the Alaska Range, and eventually drop into half-million-bbl. storage tanks in Valdez to await loading on tankers. The trip will take a month, longer if trouble turns up. But if all goes well, an uninterrupted ribbon of oil—9 million bbl. just to fill the pipeline—should stretch across the Alaskan tundra by mid-July. The flow will be stepped up gradually, reaching 600,000 bbl. daily by August, 1.2 million bbl. in October.

That would be enough to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil by 14%—assuming all the oil is used in the U.S.—and reduce the nation's bill for imported crude by $6 billion in 1978. Currently, the U.S. uses 17.2 million bbl. daily, of which slightly more than half is imported. The proven reserves of Prudhoe Bay are 9.6 billion bbl., enough to keep the pipeline busy for 20 years. The line will not be formally dedicated until Oct. 8, when it will be in full operation and a number of tankers will have been loaded.