Massive corrosion has weakened the 800-mile Trans-Alaska pipeline, prompting federal officials to investigate possible safety violations by the pipeline's operators, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the oil industry consortium that operates the pipeline, has begun making repairs to the crude-oil pipeline, the Times reported in Sunday's editions.If left unchecked, corrosion could eventually weaken the half-inch-thick steel wall of the pipe, which is pressurized and could rupture, conceivably spawning an oil spill requiring a costly pipeline shutdown.
But Alyeska officials maintain that the corrosion poses no immediate danger to its operations or to the environment. The pipeline carries crude oil from Alaska's North Slope to Valdez, where the crude is transferred to tankers for shipment to refineries.
"We have sufficient early warning in this case," said Bill Howitt, Alyeska's manager for engineering. "We don't have pipeline integrity problems."
Officials at the federal Office of Pipeline Safety aren't so sure.
"The extent of it we don't know, but it's big enough that it could affect the integrity of the pipeline," said Jack Overly, the agency's Western regional division chief.
Alyeska may have violated federal safety regulations by failing to adequately maintain portions of its ystems designed to retard corrosion, according to agency staff reports.
Pipeline inspection reports show that safeguards against corrosion often were incomplete or faulty to begin with, the Times reported.