George Savage: "The World's Largest Tube of ChapStick"

Stay tuned for the next self-fulfilling prophecy from the environmental left.  The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which supplies 11 % of US oil production, is on the verge of failing. Suddenly.  All at once.

Too little oil is flowing too slowly to keep the crude from congealing during the long journey from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

… the slow flow means the crude spends more time above ground in the cold Alaskan winters; the average January temperature is -10 Fahrenheit at one point in the route.

 According to Alyeska, if the current trend continues, the winter temperature of crude in the pipeline could drop to 32 degrees by 2013 and ice crystals will begin to form inside it, putting it at higher risk of a rupture.

The problems facing the pipeline were made very clear in January, when a leak on the North Slope forced two back-to-back winter shutdowns for a total of 148 hours. Temperatures inside the pipeline dropped by almost two degrees a day. Much longer, says E.G. "Betsy" Haines, Alyeska's oil movement director, and wax in the crude would have begun congealing, potentially turning TAPS into the world's largest tube of ChapStick.

After the January leak, a federal oversight agency found that the low volume of oil flowing through the pipeline "has resulted in numerous integrity challenges that have not been fully addressed." Among its concerns: ice can create plugs that damage valves and sensors; wax buildup can cause corrosion. Either can leave the pipeline vulnerable to ruptures and spills.

The natural solution to federal concerns over the low volume of oil transiting the pipeline would be to add more.  But this would require exploring and drilling, and our federal government can't allow that, not in this country anyway. 

Oil companies are having a hard time getting permits for new exploration from the federal government.

Shell earlier this year canceled plans to drill in the Beaufort Sea this summer because, after five years, it couldn't get a federal air-emission permit for an offshore drilling rig. Its plans for drilling in the Chukchi Sea on Alaska's northwest coast are also held up by a legal dispute. Exxon Mobil is also waiting for federal environmental approval, and in February, the federal government denied ConocoPhillips a permit the company had been working on for five years.

 Meanwhile, the environmentalists think public concern over the price and availability of fuel is, well, obsessive. 

Some environmentalists think the more reasonable answer is to let the pipeline die a natural death.

"We have a pipeline well past its expiration date and there is an obsession with keeping the pipe full and flowing in perpetuity," says Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has sued to block Shell's exploration plans. "It may be nearing the end of its useful life anyway."

 This is just the latest example of political peak oil.  One reason for the high price of crude today is the increasing likelihood that one winter morning we will awaken to learn that, during the night, the $8 billion Trans-Alaska Pipeline became an 800-mile-long tube of lip balm.  Your federal government at work.