page_title: Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
section_title: Future of the pipeline
hierarchical_section_title: Trans-Alaska Pipeline System / Future of the pipeline
caption_attribution_description: English: A chart of the temperature of the oil inside the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System as relative to the distance from Pump Station 1
context_page_description: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of the world's largest pipeline systems. It is commonly called the Alaska pipeline, trans-Alaska pipeline, or Alyeska pipeline, but those terms technically apply only to the 800 miles of the pipeline with the diameter of 48 inches that conveys oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. The crude oil pipeline is privately owned by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.
  The pipeline was built between 1975 and 1977, after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the United States. This rise made exploration of the Prudhoe Bay oil field economically feasible. Environmental, legal, and political debates followed the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, and the pipeline was built only after the oil crisis provoked the passage of legislation designed to remove legal challenges to the project.
  In building the pipeline, engineers faced a wide range of difficulties, stemming mainly from the extreme cold and the difficult, isolated terrain.
context_section_description: Decline in oil production has posed a serious problem for the pipeline. As the flow rate slows, oil spends longer in the pipeline, which allows it to cool much further while travelling to Valdez. It cannot be allowed to fall below freezing (32 °F), otherwise the pipeline could seize up, crack, and rupture, as the water content would separate from the oil and freeze in place. A "Low Flow Impact Study" conducted by the pipeline operators, Alyeska, concluded in June 2011 that the minimum flow for the pipeline as it currently existed was 300,000 to 350,000 barrels per day in the winter.
  However, this minimum flow rate is a legally contentious figure, since the taxable value of the pipeline is largely dependent on how long it will continue to be operable. Later in 2011, the Alaska Superior Court ruled that this low flow study Alyeska conducted was invalid, and ruled in favor of an internal BP study. The BP study concluded that with the installation of heaters along the pipeline route, the minimum flow could be lowered to 70,000 barrels per day (11,000 m³/d). This court ruling increased ninefold the taxed property value of the pipeline. A study by the National Resources Defence Council that was also cited in this court case put specific numbers to this suggestion, and concluded that an investment of $0.8 billion in shoring up the pipeline could extend its lifespan long enough to extract an additional $28 billion of oil from existing wells alone. This NRDC study additionally explained: "This is a lower
  minimum throughput level than what is implied in Alyeska’s Low Flow Impact Study (LoFIS). We did not use the minimum throughput level implied by LoFIS because we have serious reservations about the assumptions used in the study and the LoFIS does not provide adequate data to support its claims."
  The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System Renewal Environmental Impact Statement estimated in 2010 that flow levels would be workable through at least 2032 due to ongoing exploration outside ANWR. Improvements that allow low flow-rates could extend its lifespan as far as 2075.
  By law, Alaska is required to remove all traces of the pipeline after oil extraction is complete. No date has been set for this removal, but plans for it are being updated continuously.
caption: The temperature along the length of the line, as of early 2019. This visually demonstrates the effects of heaters at each Pump Station that increase the temperature.
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