ALASKA: Those Post-Pipeline Blues

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The granddaddy of all garage sales is soon to occur in Alaska. With the completion of the great 800-mile Alyeska oil pipeline at last in sight, the builders are preparing to sell off the vast store of equipment accumulated in 2½ years of construction. Among the items for sale: 18,000 bulldozers, cranes and other pieces of heavy equipment; nearly 2,000 pickup trucks; 125 portable bridges; and from the 29 construction camps strung out along the line, 5,395 modular camp buildings fitted out as dormitories, kitchens, game rooms and offices and fully equipped right down to the telephones and Coke machines. Alyeska's most prized offering: 1,500 elaborately insulated outhouses built, at a cost of $ 10,000 each, to serve in comfort in —70° temperatures. TIME Correspondent John Quirt toured the line as its builders, a consortium of eight U.S. and British oil companies, hurried to complete the largest private construction job ever undertaken in the U.S. His report:

All last week, helicopters churned high into the snow-capped Chugach Mountains in southern Alaska as if on a frantic rescue mission—which, in a way, they were. The choppers were carrying crews to finish a critical half-mile link in the pipeline before the long Alaska winter sets in. Working through the rapidly shortening arctic autumn days and, under portable arc lamps, far into the lengthening night, the men slogged through ankle-deep mud to set the last 40-ft. lengths of pipe in place. It was slow, hazardous work, hampered by howling winds, rock slides and blowing snow. Drawled one grizzled pipeliner, "This here Thompson Pass, she's a frozen hell in the sky."

The airborne assault—Alyeska President Bill Darch calls it a "commando raid"—on the pass could be stopped cold by a heavy snowfall. If it was, finishing touches on this last difficult part of the line would have to wait until about 30 ft. of snow melts late next spring.

Almost on Schedule. Elsewhere along the line, other final construction work has already been slowed by blizzards and sporadic work stoppages. As a result, concedes Darch, "we are not going to meet our goal of putting oil into the line next May." But "with a little luck," he insists, the oil will start to flow by the end of June, enabling Alyeska to begin loading tankers at the ice-free port of Valdez almost on schedule.

But Thompson Pass is only one of the obstacles that could still upset the timetable. Another is the need to unearth, test, mend and backfill the last 200 of 3,955 "suspect" welds—about 10% of the total—that earlier this year were discovered to have been inspected sloppily or not at all. Some are buried under ice-covered river crossings, and they will have to be dug up and, if necessary, rewelded before the salmon return next spring. That chore, wryly says one Alyeska technician, promises to be "another wildly interesting experiment in arctic engineering." It could add to the project's cost, which has already soared from an early estimate of $900 million in the late 1960s to $7.7 billion today. Some officials reckon that the hassle over the welds will help push the final bill to $8.4 billion.