TABLE OF CONTENTS The New York Times Abstract:
A tanker filled to capacity with crude oil ran aground and ruptured yesterday 25 miles from the southern end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, spewing her cargo into water rich in marine life. (Shabecoff, 1989)
After oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay on the northern coast of Alaska in 1968, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company was formed by the owner companies: BP Exploration, ARCO, Exxon, Mobil, Amerada Hess, Phillips, and Union. Alyeska determined that the most economic method of transporting oil from Prudhoe Bay to the U.S. west coast was oil transport through a pipeline from the bay to Valdez, followed by oil tanker transport south. President Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act on November 16,1973.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) consists of an extensive 800 mile pipeline (Figure 6.1), 11 pump stations, and an oil terminal at Valdez; it cost more than $8 billion to build (USDIBLM, 2005).
TAPS is fed by several North Slope fields, including the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. Prudhoe accounts for one-fourth of total domestic U.S. production and, through 1996, about one-eighth of U.S. consumption. The Valdez terminal contains 18 holding tanks, each of which holds about 0.5 million barrels of crude oil. Smaller storage facilities at Valdez add another 0.2 million barrel capacity. The average...
