TAPS and Keystone Have Similar Environmental Issues But One Critical Difference

Oil Pro ^ | 9/25/2014 | Allen Brooks

[thackney]

The proposed 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada to Steele City, Nebraska may be the second most famous crude oil pipeline in American history after the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline. One has yet to be built while the other has been operating since 1977, but the two pipelines share a common history marked by environmental controversy in its approval process. The TAPS line, as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline became known as, was proposed in 1969 to move the recently discovered Alaskan North Slope oil to the Lower 48 market via tanker from the Port of Valdez.

The Prudhoe Bay oil field was discovered by Atlantic Richfield Corp. (now part of BP Ltd.) and Humble Oil (a part of Exxon Mobil Corp.) with their Prudhoe Bay State #1 well on March 12, 1968. The field began producing on June 20, 1977, and ultimately reached a peak shipment volume of 1.5 million barrels a day in 1988. The field actually produced more daily at its peak, but the excess supply was placed in storage to ensure smooth shipment volumes. Today, Prudhoe Bay produces somewhere around 545,000 barrels per day.

The Prudhoe Bay field lies in a pristine area of the North Slope, lying between the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska to the west and the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge to the east. When TAPS was proposed as the least costly and most environmentally safe method for moving the oil to market, it immediately became the target of environmentalists concerned both about the environmental risk of the line and those focused on stopping the use of fossil fuels. As chronicled in an article by Stephen Moore and Joel Griffith of the Heritage Foundation in today’s Wall Street Journal, many of the environmental issues used to attack the construction of the TAPS pipeline are similar to those being leveled today at the Keystone pipeline. While there are a number of similarities in the attacks, the key to the approval of TAPS doesn’t exist today for Keystone.

In February 1969, three oil companies (ARCO, BP and Exxon) holding leases in the Bay field sought and received approval from the federal government to form Alyeska Pipeline Service Corporation to undertake geological and engineering studies for an oil pipeline that would run across Alaska between Prudhoe Bay and Valdez. Later in 1969, Exxon sent the tanker SS Manhattan with an ice-strengthened bow, larger engines and hardened propellers from the Atlantic Ocean through the Northwest Passage to the Beaufort Sea. The tanker suffered several ruptured tanks allowing salt water in and the ship was pushed off its desired course and had to transverse a more challenging passage. The following summer, the tanker successfully transited the route, but it was ultimately deemed too risky to consider shipping Prudhoe Bay output by tanker.

Environmentalists claimed the pipeline risked creating environmental disasters. The Wilderness Society issued a resolution stating that the pipeline threatened “”imminent, grave and irreparable damage to the ecology, wilderness values, natural resources, recreational potential, and total environment of Alaska.” Wow! In March 1970, a suit against the pipeline was launched by the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Defense Fund. Again, the complaint was the risk of environmental disaster from the pipeline. One complaint in the suit was that the pipeline would “interfere with the natural and migratory movements of wildlife, primarily caribou and moose.” We understand that those herds are larger today than in 1976 and the animals use the warmth of the pipeline for relief during Alaskan winters. The Western Arctic caribou herd, as reported on in 2011 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Wildlife Conservation, was four times larger than in 1976.

The effect of these claims and the lawsuit was that the project was held up for years. It wasn’t until after the Arab Oil Embargo in the fall of 1973 that Congress moved quickly to pass legislation - the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act in November 1973. During the legislative debate, many claims were leveled at the safety of the pipeline. Warnings about the risk of rupture of the pipeline from earthquakes and threats to wildlife and the “way of life” of native Alaskan tribes from its existence were leveled at TAPS. None of these concerns has become an issue. In November 2002, there was an earthquake along the Denali Fault that damaged structures holding the pipeline above ground, but no leaks resulted. That same year, a study conducted for the American Society of Civil Engineers found that the pipeline and the surrounding ecosystem were healthy. Certainly there was damage to the ecosystem of Prince William Sound from the grounding of the Exxon Valdez tanker in 1989, but recent reports point to its recovery.

What we know is that pipeline construction has improved over the years and we can build lines in environmentally challenging locations. That doesn’t address the issues of recent oil spills by Enbridge, ExxonMobil and TransCanada Corp., the sponsor of Keystone. It is important for the industry to acknowledge that no project can guarantee 100% avoidance of accidents, but overall the safety record of pipelines is superb, and generally safer than other modes of transporting liquid petroleum products. Importantly, leaving property totally alone, as environmentalists would like, isn’t the answer as we witnessed during the Clinton presidency. During those years the forest service did not clean out under-brush from forests that contributed to the eventual rise in the number of forest fires initially caused by lightning strikes but then fed by the dry brush.

So what does the experience of the environmental concerns raised about TAPS have to do with Keystone? Prior to the Arab Oil Embargo, they are similar. But what would have been the fate of TAPS had the oil crisis not developed and oil prices tripled? Remember, U.S. lifestyles were actually much more dependent on oil than we are today. Then, our cars averaged 5-7 miles per gallon and oil powered a substantial portion of our electricity generation, let alone the large percentage of homes that heated with oil. One wonders if it will take a disruption of our oil supplies in order to move President Barack Obama to finally approve the Keystone XL pipeline construction permit.

[thackney]

A further comparison, the Trans Alaska Pipeline operated by Alyeska employs about 800 people directly and hundreds to thousands of contractors depending on the current work load.

http://www.alyeska-pipe.com/TAPS

[buffyt]

I live in Texas. We already have the southern part of the K XL P that goes from Oklahoma to Texas. No problem. We have pipelines everywhere down here, under our yards, etc. When I got a new fence I had to call a number so that any pipelines or sewer lines or elec lines could be marked so the fencers didn’t dig into them. And we have hundreds of chemical company complexes up and down our coast! We have offshore drilling rigs just off our shore, I am 5 miles from the coastline. NO PROBLEM! yet the tanker trucks are a problem, much more dangerous than pipelines buried under the ground....

Call 811 Before You Dig. You can call 811 or www.texas811.org. Remember to call before you begin any project requiring digging.

[The Great RJ]

I remember in the late 1960s environmentalists assured us that if TAPS was built Alaska would quickly become an oil soaked moonscape, all the caribou would be dead and that the pipeline would surely fail because of all the engineering problems. Forty years later NONE of these dire predictions have come true. The XL pipeline presents few of the engineering challenges of TAPS and will be like the scores of other pipelines beneath our feet for decades that have functioned without problems.

[Oatka]

Forty years later NONE of these dire predictions have come true.

That's the pattern of all their crack-brained Chicken-Little scenarios, yet so many buy into them - especially the politicians.