The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was approved by Congress in 1973, shortly after the Arab Oil Embargo, and began carrying crude oil from Alaska’s North Slope south to the port at Valdez in 1977. Since then, TAPS has moved more than 17 billion barrels of crude oil, or about 2.4 times as much oil as the entire United States consumes in two years. That’s a lot!
But in a recent opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, Thomas Barrett—president of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which operates the TAPS—argues that this national asset is in danger of being shut down. And by law, once the pipeline is shut down, it has to be dismantled. So what’s going on?
The pipeline was originally designed to carry 2.1 million barrels of oil per day. As Barrett notes, “At its peak, more than two million barrels flowed down TAPS every day. Today, the daily average is closer to 530,000 barrels. Years of declining production make TAPS operations increasingly difficult . . . [B]ut the long-term health of TAPS requires larger quantities of new production.” Without those new volumes of crude oil the pipeline, it’s likely pipeline will have to cease operations in about eight years, maybe less.
The problem isn’t a lack of oil resources. The problem is a lack of access. The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) estimates that Alaska’s Arctic offshore basins hold more than 27 billion barrels of oil (not to mention 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas). Those resources could provide sufficient amounts of crude oil to sustain TAPS for many decades. That is, if companies can get to them.
That’s where the Obama Administration comes in. The draft five-year offshore leasing program now being considered by DOI included leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska’s Arctic coast, as well as one in Cook Inlet—areas, as noted above, with lots of crude oil. But it’s not a sure thing these resources will be part of DOI’s final package.
Barrett concludes his piece saying, “Given the long lead times required to safely develop Arctic offshore resources and the urgent need for new investment in the region, the Obama administration should include all three Alaska lease sales in the coming [final] five-year program. Americans will need to rely on fossil fuels for much of their energy needs for decades to come. It would be shortsighted to limit voluntarily the options for strengthening U.S. energy security.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.