Alaska is Just 15 Minutes from Anchorage

Status
Not open for further replies.


(cross posted in "Awl Bidness" thread)


Pipeline Built To Survive Extremes Can't Bear Slow Oil Flow



by Alex Nussbaum
‎April‎ ‎10‎, ‎2017‎


➞ Trans Alaska carrying just a quarter of its peak volume
➞ The lower the flow, the higher the risks from Arctic cold



Here at the top of the world, January brought a glimpse of the anxious future facing Alaska’s once-mighty oil pipeline.

The 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline System was built for extreme conditions. But as the state’s oil production has declined, the pipeline faces a new challenge: flows so sluggish operators worry the line may become unusable, cutting off access for hundreds of North Slope oil wells.

With the mercury dipping as low as -60 Fahrenheit, workers in January fired up heating units across the system. It worked, but if the brutal cold had lasted or the oil flow had slowed further, the pipeline would have been in uncharted territory. Four decades after it opened, Alaska’s pipeline -- once a symbol of independence for an oil-strapped nation -- is facing a midlife crisis. The line now moves a quarter of the volume it carried at its peak. And as the flows slow, the risks are rising.

“We’re already at the stress point," said Tom Barrett, president of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which operates the system. “We don’t have the kind of cushion you’d like to have."

...Lower volumes mean crude travels more slowly through the pipeline, losing heat along the way. And at low temperatures, crude behaves badly. Ice crystals form that can damage pumping equipment. Carbon molecules, meanwhile, coalesce into paraffin, a waxy residue that, if not cleared out, can gunk up the line “like a big, frozen tube of ChapStick," said Betsy Haines, Alyeska’s oil-movements director...


much more...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...gambit-shines-light-on-little-known-oil-giant


https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i9tBInn95Tfs/v2/800x-1.jpg










 
Tina Fey as Palin: “And I can see Russia from my house.”
What Palin actually told Charlie Gibson: "“They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”.

I can see Russia from....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top