Just as the US is now debating the trade-offs between energy and the environment, particularly in Alaska, a generation ago a similar debate was focused on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Ferocious claims were made by proponents and opponents alike.
A photographer's journey along the pipeline, from end to end, suggests that the starkest fears of ecological devastation have not come to pass. And yet, just as the current debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge centers on the value of leaving a wilderness alone, the pipeline offers a powerful glimpse into a wilderness touched.
1,290km long, 122cm in diameter, stretching across the Arctic tundra, over (or under) more than 800 rivers and streams, and through three mountain ranges, the pipeline bisects the nation's biggest state. Even the critics who wish it had never been built agree that its construction, in the 1970s, was an epic feat of engineering, one that employed 28,000 men and women at the peak of construction and claimed 31 lives.
For the Trans-Alaska Pipeline has definitely become a part of the landscape. Its beauty, or its decided lack of beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Those in the oil industry, and many of the tourists who come to marvel at it, say the pipeline blends in with the scenery, so much so that grizzly bears romp around it in the north and seals sun near it at Valdez. Then President George Bush memorably observed in 1988 that some caribou even like to "snuggle up next to the pipeline." Other people, of course, see an eyesore, an ugly gash by the hand of man across a magnificent natural landscape.
Since the first drop of crude in 1977, more than 13 billion barrels of North Slope oil have traveled from Prudhoe Bay in the far north to the southern terminus at Valdez.
Oil transformed the Alaskan economy. It provides 85 percent of the state budget and is the basis of the state's optimistically named Permanent Fund, whose dividends are parceled out annually: Last fall, every man, woman and child in Alaska received a check for US$1,963.86.
Now nearing its 25th anniversary, the pipeline is delivering oil at only half the peak rate -- reached in the late 1980s -- of 2 million barrels a day. Alaskans tend strongly to favor President Bush's proposal to open the Arctic refuge to drilling as a way to continue the bonanza.
And they enthusiastically support plans for another pipeline, to deliver the huge natural gas reserves locked in the Arctic. This one could parallel the oil pipeline for much of the way, then divert east to Canada and south to the lower 48 states, running longer than the Great Wall of China.
Environmentalists say that as the oil pipeline ages, its corrosion will make it increasingly susceptible to leaks and other damage. A spokesman for the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co, which operates it and is jointly owned by the six oil companies that send the oil from the north, says: "The pipeline is not infallible, it is not indestructible. But with proper maintenance, the life of the pipeline is indefinite."
Every inch of the pipeline is monitored by computers, and it shuts down when an unexpected drop in pressure is detected, limiting the size of any spill. Since it opened, 19 spills of 100 barrels or more have been reported, none close in size to Alaska's biggest oil spill. The company once calculated that the amount the pipeline had spilled represented only 0.0000025 percent of the amount delivered.
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