Alaska Pipeline Coming Down

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The 800-mile-long Alaska Pipeline, one of the wonders of the industrial world, is about to become a victim of climate change. But it really doesn’t matter much.

One of my favorite things is to connect two major news stories, each of which is credible on its own,  but one of which cancels the other. One of my least favorite things is the shoddy journalism that goes into one of the stories. So today is the best of days, and the worst of days.

Story number one is alarming on its face, and at that somewhat understates the danger: “Alaska: One of the World’s Largest Pipelines Threatened by Thawing Permafrost,” blares one of the many headlines seen around the world. The fact is, the pipeline is doomed. On the other hand, it’s not going to matter very much.

The problem is that the relentlessly rising temperatures in the north are melting the permafrost on which a good deal of the pipeline rests. One area in particular — an 800-foot section on a slope that is the subject of this story —  has begun to slide, twisting the pipeline’s structural supports and threatening a rupture. Engineers are trying to refrigerate the permafrost in this particular area with 100 devices called thermosyphons approved two years ago because — dwell on this a moment — the engineers knew this was going to happen. (Can you say “desperation?”) But they have only now begun to install them. Now that the ground is actually in motion.

Given the inevitable, continued rise in temperatures for the foreseeable future, a failure of the pipeline, sooner or later,  is certain. The second story, appearing at about the same time but certainly not in the same publications, explains why I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either.   

The Alaska Pipeline may be one of the world’s largest, but it is no longer one of the world’s most important. Story Number Two, put out by our own federal government’s Energy Information Agency, bears the headline: Oil production in Alaska reaches lowest level in more than 40 years. From its peak of two million barrels a day in the late 1980s, the state’s production has fallen below half a million barrels per day. 

As a result, the Alaska Pipeline is a shadow of its former self, carrying one-quarter of the oil it transmitted 25 years ago. In winter, the pipeline must move at least 350,000 gallons per day or the oil slows down, cools down and congeals. In other words, it stops. So here we have a massive, 800-mile-long industrial installation that requires more and more spending, for pumps, heaters and ground refrigeration (!) to continue to move less and less oil. How’s that for a business plan.

But, like so many of the industrial merry-go-rounds on which we whirl, nobody can get off this one. The state of Alaska has few other sources of income, it does not levy a personal income tax or a sale tax. Revenues from the oil and gas industry not only fund two-thirds of the state’s annual budget, but generate a dividend check every year for every resident. That dividend check is getting smaller every year, and every year there is less revenue for the state, and the words “income tax” are heard more frequently these days in the cold Alaska winds — and in the Alaska legislature. But resistance is fierce, and it seems certain that, rather than do what must be done, Alaska will ride the merry-go-round until the merry-go-round stops.

Which it will soon, of course. But here’s why this will not be the disaster for the country that ill-informed journalists assume. Today Alaska provides just four per cent of the crude oil consumed by the United States. Its loss will wound, but will certainly not kill.