and I've been wondering when this was going to happen. I believe the shutdown is bigger news than it might at first seem, because there's a very good chance that Prudhoe Bay crude will NEVER flow through that tube again.
When you're up close to the massive 56" diameter pipe where it stands on its vertical support members, the thing seems so huge and heavy it appears almost indestructible. But if you fly over it, boy does it ever shrink in size compared to the grand expanse of Alaska terrain real fast!
Here's some more good info from the article cited:
Oil analyst Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover, said shutting down an oil field is an expensive and risky step that is only taken in extreme circumstances. He said that suggests the 400,000 barrels a day produced in Prudhoe Bay could be shut off for some time to come.
"They wouldn't be shutting down Prudhoe Bay if this wasn't absolutely necessary," said Beutel. "Once you shut it down, you don't know what will happen when you come back. It could cause all types of problems."
(Emphases mine)
And he's almost
understating the situation in saying this much.
For those who aren't real familiar with how pipelines and pumping stations work, I can offer the following imagery to help you picture what a shutdown of the TransAlaska Pipeline would look like. It's overly simplistic, of course, but it's a good way to summarize the problem.
First, a little background info. Imagine, if you can, a really big tube that's about 800 miles long, stretching from north to south across Alaska, roughly half of it aboveground and half below. It runs through and across some of the most extreme terrain in the world. Along its route and integral to the system are its pumping stations -- I don't recall how many but let's say there are 10-12 of them. These are sparsely manned, and of course we can be assured that the "routine maintenance" that was initially specified for the pumping stations and the pipeline itself has never been carried out to its fullest extent. I figure it's been "barely adequate" at best, and at worst... well, it's not hard to guess about that. This maintenance and repair regimen reduction is something I assumed would happen even as we were building the thing.
The article cited in the OP even confirms it:
Gheit said the problems with the pipeline should not be a surprise, adding it's been well known that oil companies are not doing enough regular maintenance on their infrastructure.
When oil prices were low, they were reluctant to spend on that kind of maintenance, he said. But when prices soared in recent years, the cost of shutting down a pipeline or other facilities (like the pumping stations) for maintenance would have meant too much lost production.
(Emphasis again mine)
Keep in mind this pipeline is 30 years old now, and imagine what 30 years of substandard maintenance could result in in terms of degradation of the system in its many parts along its 800-mile length. Remember the climate we're talking about too, with extremes of temperatures ranging from 60 degrees below zero (or even colder) to 100 above.
Also, the warming climatic conditions the earth is now experiencing, which are melting glaciers at a record rate, might be thawing some of the fragile permafrost through which the pipeline passes. That could easily be "rearranging" the very shape of the pipeline if its vertical support members sink and tilt.
And distorted shape can mean breaks, leakage, and spills of mammoth proportions.
Okay, so here's the simplistic image. Imagine an 800-mile-long tube of CHAPSTICK. If the flow of oil has been shut down, the crude can quickly cool enough to begin congealing. It's summer now, but temps in Alaska can drop below freezing quite easily even in summer in the southern regions; and we know that Prudhoe Bay is well north of the Arctic Circle, where warm temps rarely reach anyway. Think of what you've heard about Barrow, Alaska.
Then imagine the cold climate acting on that tube of Chapstick to harden it even more as winter arrives, if they haven't been able to make the necessary repairs and get the oil flowing again by then. And winter above the Arctic Circle starts about, oh, JULY, or maybe early August.
So, once the "Chapstick" in the line has frozen really hard, just how in the world could you expect to EVER get the crude flowing again in that pipeline??
I can't imagine it, I can tell you that much!
This is the exact scenario I have long feared most about that system. It's far worse than any individual spill would likely be. The reason they never shut down the pipeline to make "routine" maintenance checks, which really ought to include new X-rays of the welds in the pipe for cracks, is that it IS so difficult to safely and successfully restore the flow again afterwards!
I suspect this "temporary" shutdown may extend not only to a few weeks or months, but it could well be a permanent shutdown.
So, even considering that
not ALL of that 400,000 bpd pumped from Prudhoe goes to the United States for consumption, what might a permanent shutdown of the TransAlaska Pipeline do to the delicate balance of crude oil availability?
These are very scary times indeed....
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