Alaskans' passion for pipelines: positive symbols of pride and prosperity.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: OIL & GAS

When the first oil moved through the trans-Alaska oil pipeline on June 20, 1977, it made headlines around the world.

The pipeline was heralded as an engineering marvel. The forty-eight-inch diameter pipe runs for eight hundred miles from Alaska's North Slope to tidewater in Valdez, crossing three mountain ranges and thirty major rivers and running across hundreds of miles of permanently frozen ground. Recorded temperatures along that route span 175 degrees--from Fahrenheit 80 below zero to 95 above. It took a work force of seventy thousand people three years and two months to complete the project at a cost of $8 billion. It was the largest privately funded construction project at the time.

Forty years later, the pipeline is still regarded as an iconic piece of Alaskana. Although its flow has diminished, the oil it carries, 17 billion barrels to date, still provides the lion's share of the state's income, as well as the anticipated dividend checks most Alaskan residents receive each fall. But there's more to it than just a massive conduit for oil, a sentiment that plays into the desire for another major pipeline to funnel Alaska's vast deposits of natural gas to market.

Alaskans have a passion for pipelines.

Positive Symbols

"Pipelines, to an Alaskan, are a symbol of success, independence, financial security, and apple pie," says Larry Persily, who served as the federal coordinator for Alaska natural gas pipeline projects from 2010 to 2015. "We covet pipelines like a Yankees fan covets World Series titles. Or like Trump covets tax deductions."

Besides the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, a network of pipes serves the Cook Inlet and Kenai Peninsula oil and gas fields. A 312-mile buried pipeline is planned to provide natural gas to the Donlin gold mine in southwest Alaska. Another LNG (liquefied natural gas) pipeline that would bring North Slope natural gas to market has been discussed for decades. Why pipelines? In a state with few roads and vast distances to cover, other transportation methods are simply uneconomical. Not that building one in a land of ice, snow, and earthquakes is easy, but Alaskans did it.

"It's symbolic of the true grit and pride we have in living in Alaska," says Bill Bailey, Fairbanks community and communications manager for Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. Alyeska President Tom Barrett, a former admiral, often expresses pride in TAPS (Trans Alaska Pipeline System) employees who '"recognize that just because something is...