Twenty Years of the Pipe that Changed Alaska

Twenty years ago, about 100 miles south of the Arctic Ocean, a welder fused a section of 48-inch pipe with molten metal. When he snuffed his torch, the trans-Alaska pipeline was an 800-mile tube of steel.

On June 20, 1977, oil began flowing from the bowels of the earth at Prudhoe Bay, through Pump Station 1, and into the trans-Alaska pipeline. At the time, an editorial in the "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner" heralded the pipeline as the world's largest private construction project. In "The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy," Peter Coates wrote that others had grander analogies, comparing the pipeline to the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China.

More than 28,000 Alyeska Pipeline Service Company workers and contractors worked on the pipeline at the peak of activity in 1975, and 31 people died in activities related to pipeline construction, according to Trans-Alaska Pipeline System Facts a palm-sized book distributed by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.

The pipeline almost wasn't built. After ARCO and Humble Oil and Refining Co. (now Exxon) announced the Prudhoe Bay discovery well in March 1968, environmentalists voiced concerns: aside from being an absurd idea, a pipeline snaking the length of the largest state in the union could endanger its people, animals, plants and waters. In April 1970, the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Defense Fund sued then Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel to stop the pipeline from happening.

After three years of passionate arguments between environmentalists and pipeline backers, world events tipped the balance toward the construction of the pipeline, Coates wrote. Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on Oct. 6, 1973. To retaliate for American military aid to Israel, Arab members of OPEC stopped exporting oil to the U.S.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act became law after it passed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate on Nov. 16, 1973. Construction of the pipeline began the next spring by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, which is comprised of BP, ARCO, Exxon, Mobil, Amerada Hess, Phillips Alaska, and Unocal.

Japanese steel mills shipped more than 100,000 lengths of 40- and 60-foot pipe. Welders in Valdez and Fairbanks then made 42,000 double joints, connecting two sections of pipe together, before the longer sections were trucked to the field. On March 27, 1975, the first piece of pipe was set in place at the Tonsina River between Valdez and Copper Center. A little more than two years and 66,000 field welds later, the pipeline was the solid sum of its parts.

Today, the pipeline spans 800.302 miles from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. A little more than half of the pipe, 420 miles, was routed above the ground so the warm pipe wouldn't melt permafrost. Four miles of pipe are refrigerated below the ground, and, in 376 miles of thaw-stable and non-permafrost areas, the pipe is buried. The pipe dives under or crosses over 834 rivers and streams. Workers constructed 13 bridges along the route, including a $30 million, 2,295-foot orthotropic box girder model over the Yukon River.

Originally budgeted at $900 million, the pipeline cost more than $8 billion to build. Today, one-tenth of the oil Americans use every day passes through the pipeline. Royalties from North Slope oil provide more than two-thirds of Alaska's state budget, which has swelled considerably since oil started to flow on June 20, 1977, a day the editorial writer at the "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner" marked with the following words:

"As the first oil enters the trans-Alaska pipeline, we stand at the point of reaping benefits which can make Alaska the showplace of modern development. We can nurture our wealth to give Alaska a stable economy and keep the quality of life we have enjoyed in the past, or we can squander it in ways which may someday make 'Alaska' a word synonymous with foolishness and greed . . .

"Starting today, the whole world is watching Alaska, not Alyeska. We're the ones on center stage now, and the next few decades can see Alaskans become either the heroes or the villains in the greatest roles we've ever played."