45 Years of TAPS: 800 miles between Alaska as it was and Alaska today.

• Author: O'Hanley, Tara
• Position: OIL & GAS

Forty-five years after the first tanker left Valdez carrying North Slope oil to market, many of today's worries echo past headlines. Inflation was a major concern. Energy costs were skyrocketing. New construction was stalled due to increasing costs, a shortage of available labor, and constraints on the global supply chain. Far-off wars were influencing global energy commodity markets. And, like today, drilling for oil in the Arctic was offered as a solution--albeit today it comes with heightened concerns for the environment.

Into this political landscape, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was born. Three years of construction--and nine years of political wrangling--culminated with the first oil entering the pipe at 10:06 a.m. on Monday, June 20, 1977. Workers and civilians put their ears to the 48-inch-diameter steel casing to listen to the crude flowing through the 800-mile-long pipe. Six weeks later, on August 1, the tanker ARCO Juneau carried away the first load. Alaska would never be the same.

For this quinquadragennial, celebrations at Alyeska Pipeline Service Company are largely employee-focused, with outward observances held in reserve for the golden jubilee in 2027. The public-facing anniversary takes the form of "Memories and Milestones," a retrospective on Alyeska's website, alyeska-pipe.com, with historic photos, news articles, and reminiscences.

"While we celebrate all of the things that the TAPS designers and those who constructed the pipeline anticipated," says Chief Communications Officer Michelle Egan, "those who've come since have continued to do that. The engineering marvel is this constant renewal with the workforce that we have and the minds that we have working on solutions."

Competitors Collaborate

Announcements of the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay State Well No. 1 in 1968 prompted the most experienced petroleum professionals in the world to team up to bring the oil to market.

Up to then, each company involved in the construction of TAPS had been doing its own studies, such as whether it was even possible to build a pipeline, how much it would cost, and how long it might take to build it. in the fall of 1968, just months after the discovery, each of the owners began assembling all this technical information into an intercompany task force to lead a feasibility study. The task force later incorporated to become Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the nonprofit contractor that operates TAPS to this day on behalf of...