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I don't believe that this is the real issue. Here is a link to the PDF of the entire issue of Petroleum News:

petroleumnews.pdf (6meg)

There is information in this trade journal worth reviewing. One of issues many have glossed over is the issue of oil company profits. The recent "windfall" profits are just that. Up until recently many companies were losing money because of oversupply. That was certainly going to influence how much maintenance and capital expenditures were being made by BP in the recent past. Even with the recent "windfalls" BP seems to be having a more difficult time than other companies. In that same issue of Petroleum News there was a compilation of the top 30 energy company earnings. BP in the first quarter of 2006 was reported to of had a reduction of 15 percent in earnings. Just something to think about and add to the mix.

The second issue worth clarifying is the location of the corrosion problems. There seems to be many inaccurate assumptions. The problem section of the BP system is not the Alaskan Pipeline but the transit lines from the oil fields to the first pipeline pump station. These systems are designated as Western OTLs (oil transit lines), Eastern OTLs and Lisburne OTL. The original leak was discovered at a Caribou crossing from GC-2 (gathering center 2) on OT21. At a caribou crossing the pipeline drops to ground level inside a cased crossing with fill mounded over. I am not surprised that the failure occurred here because of a combination water separation, low flow rate and a slow process of erosion of the corrosion film and pits. The design to accommodate the caribou (in my opinion) was an almost certain failure point based strictly on pipeline geometry and historical maintenance issues with all cased crossings.

The recent pigging issues were explained in the report as follows: “The problems with the maintenance pigging result from the quantities of solids currently lying in the transit lines — BP will have to remove the solids in stages, using a series of increasingly aggressive pigs. And there are no separator facilities between the transit lines and the trans-Alaska pipeline. Consequently, the sudden removal of a large quantity of solid material from the lines would result in an abnormally large quantity of solids suddenly flushing into the trans-Alaska pipeline. BP is working with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the trans-Alaska pipeline operator, to assess the risks involved in moving the solids and to plan a course of action. One solution might be to install separator tanks to remove the solids before they enter the Alyeska facilities.”

The lack of separator facilities is a very important issue in regards to what some consider to be the critical infrastructure issues of the Alaskan pipeline production and transmission system. Some may want to affix blame for corporations not being forward thinking enough. Others may want to consider that because of previous world oil pricing, most capital upgrades were a low priority since other sources of oil were readily available. I believe there is enough blame to go around for everyone and at the same time we are looking at an almost perfect storm scenario where many of the causes are beyond finger pointing.