Alaska Pipeline
Doomsayings Revisited
As PBS releases a special about the oil
delivery system, the Business & Media Institute goes back in time to recall
environmentalists’ pipe dream: stopping it.
By R. Warren Anderson
Business & Media Institute
April 19, 2006
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After the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it didn’t take
long for environmentalists to cry gloom and doom and for the media
to hype those claims. From caribou dying to earthquakes to “all hell
breaking loose,” there was no shortage of catastrophic predictions –
though the Alaska pipeline now boasts great success roughly 30 years
later.
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Construction on the pipeline began in 1975, and oil first moved
through it on June 20, 1977. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton summed up its success in 2003 that “Today the pipeline
produces 17 percent of our domestic petroleum. It has pumped nearly
14 billion barrels of oil and $400 billion into our economy. We need
the pipeline even more now than when it was built.”
    Just in time for the PBS special, “The
Alaska Pipeline,” set to air April 24 on PBS, theBusiness & Media Institute compared predictions from the pipeline’s inception to
the realities of the past three decades.
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Propaganda, Not Policy: Approval of the pipeline “was not based on
facts but on oil industry propaganda,” according to some of the
Department of Interior’s top ecologists, reported The Washington
Post on Feb. 11, 1971. The New York Times ran an editorial that
began, “passage of the Alaska pipeline bill is the triumph of scare
propaganda and economic pressure over reasoned public policy” on
Nov. 14, 1973.
Reality: Despite those claims, the pipeline has had tremendous
policy implications. It created tens of thousands of jobs, from the
construction of the pipeline in Alaska to the manufacturing of the
pipe in Pennsylvania, to the building of the tankers to transport
the oil in Louisiana.
And as gas prices rise going into another summer driving season, the
pipeline’s effect on the oil market bears mentioning. “Alaska
produces about 800,000 barrels a day or about 1 percent of the world
market of 73.5 million barrels a day,” said Peter Van Doren of the
Cato Institute.
“A loss of that production would increase prices by at least 10 to
16 percent. In the 1980s, when production was 1.8 million barrels a
day and the world market was smaller (54 mbd), the loss of Alaskan
oil would have increased world oil prices by 30 to 50 percent.”
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Bye-bye Caribou?: Many people suddenly developed a “passionate
concern for the mating habits of Alaska caribou and campaign noisily
against intrusion of Arctic pipelines into this essential activity,”
reported The Christian Science Monitor on Oct. 10, 1972. The New
York Times on Oct. 14, 1973, said the question is “whether the
caribou will go the way of the buffalo.”
Reality: Thirty years later we can see the effects of the pipeline
on the caribou. Walter Hickel, a former U.S. Secretary of the
Interior and governor of Alaska,
said that the caribou herd “has not only survived, but
flourished. In 1977, as the Prudhoe region started delivering oil to
America's southern 48 states, the Central Arctic caribou herd
numbered 6,000; it has since grown to 27,128.” Alaska’s
Department of Fish and Game Web site reports that “in general, caribou have not been adversely affected
by human activities in Alaska.” Pipelines and other manmade objects
have been built to accommodate caribou movements, and the animals
have adapted to people and machines.
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Earthquake Risk: Larry Moss of the Sierra Club stated in the Los
Angeles Times on June 14, 1973, that the oil industry “has
continued, single-mindedly, its attempt to turn a sow’s ear into a
silk purse.” Support for this claim was that the pipeline had “basic
design flaws which cannot really be overcome by engineering
ingenuity.” This was supposedly because the pipe “would cross one of
the most active earthquake zones in the world, would scar and
despoil vast tracts of magnificent, undisturbed country and would
threaten extensive oil spills in the numerous rivers which the
pipeline would cross.”
A report from “top ecologists” at the Department of the Interior
claimed that dangers of “severance in earthquake prone areas” were
“inadequately dealt with,” read The Washington Post on Feb. 11,
1971. “The Alaskan area involved is renowned for its extreme seismic
activity,” the Post reiterated on May 7, 1972. In the 70 years
before 1972, 23 major earthquakes had “clobbered the terrain” where
the Alaskan pipeline would be built, any one of which “could have
caused a catastrophic break in the pipe,” the Post article
continued.
Reality: The time passed since the construction of the pipeline
allows for testing of this claim. On Nov. 3, 2002, a 7.9-magnitude
earthquake struck Alaska. It was the worst earthquake recorded on
Alaska’s Denali fault, and considered a once-in-600-years event. The
New York Times on Nov. 5, 2002, called it “one of the largest
earthquakes in American history,” which, had it struck a major city,
“would have destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed many people.”
Tremors caused movements around Yellowstone National Park and even
rocked boats in Louisiana. In comparison, the great San Francisco
earthquake of 1906 was weaker at 7.8.
Yet the pipeline “withstood the powerful quake just as designed –
damaged but not ruptured,” according to the Nov. 10, 2002, Los
Angeles Times. “If anything, last week's powerful earthquake shows
that the pipeline could have withstood more,” the pipeline’s seismic
design coordinator said. The New York Times article said that “After
an aerial survey today, pipeline officials said they found no leaks
in the structure.”
Gale Norton
summarized the effects:
“The Alaska pipeline was just 60 miles from the quake's epicenter.
It shook back and forth, some supporting struts broke. But the
pipeline held. It did not crack. Not a drop of oil was spilled. No
one was injured. The safety systems put in place worked to
perfection.” The predicted “design flaws” that supposedly couldn’t
be “overcome by engineering ingenuity” weren’t mentioned after the
earthquake occurred.
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‘Misplaced Effort’: Less than five months after the announcement
of the oil discovery and proposed pipeline, members of the Sierra
Club complained that they were invited to only two “superficial
meetings” where they “were told nothing significant,” according to
The New York Times on July 5, 1969. The Sierra Club and their fellow
environmentalists from the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth,
and Environmental Defense Fund Inc. delayed pipeline progress with
lawsuits. The Feb. 13, 1973, New York Times said the delay in
construction “is the best the oil companies can expect, while the
possibility grows ever livelier that after years of misplaced effort
the Alaska pipeline will join such forgotten and costly fantasies as
the
South Sea Bubble.”
Reality: That “misplaced effort” has pumped 15 billion barrels of
oil into the U.S. economy. Adrian Herrera of
Arctic Power,
an Alaska-based group that advocates oil drilling in the Alaska
National Wildlife Refuge, said the effects of the pipeline have
“been huge. The benefit is both economic and social.” Infrastructure
that was built in conjunction with the pipeline has a trickle-down
effect that has helped all businesses. “Nationwide the effect has
been quite profound,” he continued. “Not just a direct benefit …
there’s indirect benefits too.” Jobs supporting the pipeline have
been spread across the nation, as have the advantages from having
more oil available.
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Pipeline Breaking: On May 6, 1970, The New York Times said that
the head of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory warned that “the
proposed trans-Alaska oil pipeline might break and wreak great
damage to the environment.”
Reality: Despite leaks in the past, the pipeline has improved
and is leaking less. The United States has the most stringent
environmental controls on oil. Any spill of more than a
teaspoon is reported.
The whole pipeline is scanned every day from the ground or
helicopters for leaks. Despite being three decades old, the pipeline
is more modern than many others around the world.
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‘All Hell’ to Break Loose: The New York Times on Nov 10, 1974,
quoted an internationally known professor on Arctic soils from
Rutgers University. He predicted “‘all hell will break loose’ on
Alaska’s north slope within five years after hot oil starts flowing
through the trans-Alaska pipeline.” He then “compared the spread of
damage to the permafrost ‘to a cancer that takes five years.’”
Reality: Of the 800-mile pipeline, 420 miles are above ground to
avoid the permafrost. When above ground, it has a 2-inch “heat pipe”
containing pure ammonia. When the air is cooler than the ground, the
ammonia vaporizes and draws the heat from the earth. The ammonia
then condenses on the pipe, starting the
process again.
Major
Oil Incidents Not Caused by Pipeline
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The pipeline has not been without accidents – but the biggest ones
did not involve pipeline malfunctions. On Feb. 15, 1978, there was a
leak of 16,000 barrels. “There are some indications that it is
sabotage. You have to suspect foul play,” said Morris Turner of the
Alaska Pipeline Office, according to The Washington Post on Feb. 16,
1978. No one was ever charged in that incident. On Oct. 4, 2001,
Daniel Carson Lewis, who had been drinking, shot the pipeline and
caused a leak of more than 6,000 barrels of oil. The Los Angeles
Times on Oct. 21, 2001, quoted a state policeman as saying, “Alcohol
and a guy with a gun – nothing deeper than that.”
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The largest oil-related incident in Alaska since the pipeline was
built was the Exxon Valdez incident – not a pipeline failure, but a
ship crashing because of human error. On March 24, 1989, a ship hit
a reef and spilled more than more than 11 million gallons of crude
oil into Prince William Sound. The ship’s captain, Joe Hazelwood,
had been drinking before the ship left, which was illegal. But the
time of the ship’s departure changed, and had it not, then he
wouldn’t have broken the law. Hazelwood also left the deck to do
other work, leaving the ship with an under-qualified sailor – a
breech of company policy.
    While many animals were killed and the
environment was damaged, it has since bounced back. The 2005
salmon run
“was so large that millions of fish were left to die and rot in
hatchery areas.” Exxon has paid out $3.5 billion in relation to the
oil spill. Alyeska, a consortium of oil companies of which Exxon is
a part, spends around $60 million a year on oil spill prevention in
Prince William Sound.
For more information:
Pipeline Quick Facts
Conditions of Prince William Sound
Arctic Power
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