Commentary: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, March 11,
2004, p. A6
A recent glimpse of the ugly, automated future of the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was soft-pedalled by government monitors
and unreported by the press.
On January 24, an Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.
electrician at Valdez tripped the wrong circuit breaker, causing the pipeline’s
nearby Operations Control Center (OCC) to issue an automatic command to stop
pipeline flow.
According to Alyeska’s Feb. 25 report to government
monitors, that’s when the real fun began.
On the 800-mile pipeline, ninety-five mainline valves – approximately
one every nine miles – are supposed to close in sequence to limit oil spills.
At Pump Station 12, in the Chugach Mountains 65 miles
from Valdez, the pipeline valves closed.
But north of Pump Station 12, the valves didn’t respond over a 150-mile
stretch.
If the valves do not close in sequence, pressure from
continuing oil flow blocked by a closed valve might cause the steel pipeline to
swell like a sausage and rupture.
At Pump Station 12 there was no place to divert incoming
oil safely: the relief tank was taken out of commission in an earlier
economizing move.
At the OCC, controllers hurriedly opened the Pump Station
12 relief system. Then they dispatched
a security officer to an abandoned pump station in Isabel Pass to try to close
the balky valves by toggling the switches in the defunct control room.
The valves didn’t respond, but a technician who happened
to be working in the area drove to the
pump station. Three hours after the
initial shutdown command was given, he finally got the valve controls to work.
Alyeska personnel now believe that aging control boards
at the pump stations may have failed.
It will take months to build replacement boards and install them. Until this is done, Alyeska is testing the
unreliable control boards weekly.
In 2002, when government monitors approved Alyeska’s
request to renew its pipeline leases for another 30 years, they assured the
public that rigorous maintenance procedures would detect worn components before
they failed, preventing this kind of problem.
In granting approval, state and
federal officials ignored public concerns regarding operational and maintenance
problems on the pipeline.
Late last year, pipeline monitors again paid little
attention to public concerns and approved Alyeska’s poorly crafted oil spill
plan revisions for automated pump stations and personnel reductions at remote
pipeline sites. After approving the
plan, the federal Bureau of Land Management released a report acknowledging
that the approved changes will result in slower spill response over more than
25 percent of the pipeline.
On March 4 Alyeska announced that the pipeline owners
have approved plans to automate pump stations on the pipeline and relocate
spill response personnel in regional response centers, reducing pipeline work
force from 1,600 persons to approximately 1,250.
Upgrading pump stations sounds like a good idea. But in fact this is a triple whammy for the
state.
First: Alyeska is
reducing field personnel, but people are critical to rapid and effective oil spill detection and response.
Second: This plan
has the cart before the horse. In
November 2003, almost as an after-thought to appease public concerns, Alyeska
promised to do a risk assessment and study of the fate and effects of oil on
inland streams. This basic planning
work should have been done before this massive overhaul was authorized.
Third: Alyeska says it wants to cut costs, but what the
TAPS Owners are really after is a handsome rate of return on new capital
investments. Under the 1985 TAPS tariff
agreement, profit on capital investment is added to an inflation-adjusted
per-barrel profit allowance that already makes the pipeline incredibly
profitable. I estimate that the capital
improvement bonus to the TAPS Owners is more than 18 percent per dollar
invested. Moreover, the automation plan
gives the major North Slope producers, who also own more than 90 percent of the
pipeline, a deduction that reduces their federal income tax on profits from
high oil prices.
Without aggressive government oversight on TAPS,
automation and cost-driven management will continue to place Alaska’s
environment at needless risk.
________
Richard A. Fineberg of
Ester is an independent consultant who reports on economic and environmental
issues related to oil development.