The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of the world's largest pipeline systems. The core pipeline itself is an 800-mile (1,287 km) long, 48-inch (1.22 m) diameter pipeline and was built between 1975 and 1977, after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the United States.[1]
Coverage[]
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline is featured in Waves of Devastation.
It was introduced in 2 days after people when the port of Valdez, Alaska is eerily quiet. Tankers came to Valdez in the time of humans to fill up with oil, which is flowed 800 miles inside the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. If laid out in the lower 48 states, it would stretch from Chicago to Dallas. The man made river of oil is pumped from Alaska's north slope, across 3 mountain ranges, and 34 major rivers, to the holding tanks in Valdez with 380 million gallons of oil being inside the pipeline at any given time. William Leffler stated that at its peak, the pipeline was moving about 2 million barrels of oil down the pipeline and with the production on the North Slope has declined, it's moving 700,000 barrels a day down the line. However, the hum of the pump stations along the pipeline stops and the fuel & electricity runs out, except in Valdez where oil continues to travel into one of the tankers where it cause a disaster that drowns the harbor with oil.
The pipeline collapse during an earthquake, spilling oil in the process.
In 200 years after people, inland sections of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline have corroded slowly in the cold climate and it takes more than rusting steel to open the pipeline. In the time of humans, the many elevated sections of pipeline and their supports were designed not only to withstand the elements but also strong Alaskan earthquakes. However, 2 centuries after people, the corroding structures of the pipeline are vulnerable. Alan W. Pense imagines an earthquake & the pipeline and stated if it's in the line of the earthquake, it is not going to survive since it will crack and when it occur, it'll spill everything out. As the earthquake cause the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to spill, the pieces of pipelines are in one of the coldest parts of the world and away from the devastating effects of water which may be some of the last remains of man. Alan W. Pense stated that it would be one of the long-last artifacts of people left behind and he did a calculation that if it have a really low corrosion rate, many steel parts would last for over 2,000 to 2,500 years.