[Xenophobe]

PS1 breaking down isn't a bad spot, 7 or 8 would have been better. 2 wouldn't be so bad, 3 would suck. I've never been to the pump stations south of Fairbanks.

[Xenophobe]

I've never been to the pump stations south of Fairbanks.

Or out of your basement command center.

Oh now thats funny! Good one Pee!

The next time I'm on the North Slope I'm going to drive there in a hybrid just to show that you can be environmentally friendly and still enjoy the benefits mankind derives from our crude oil endowment.

[Xenophobe]

The next time I'm on the North Slope I'm going to drive there in a hybrid just to show that you can be environmentally friendly and still enjoy the benefits mankind derives from our crude oil endowment.

A lot of good your plug-in conversion is going to do. Good luck finding a outlet for the your "plug" on the Haul Road.

The beauty of carrying an ICE along with you. I'm worried about its durability on that surface though, any machine takes a pounding on the gravel sections.

[Xenophobe]

There's no room for the spare, with the trunk loaded down with extra batteries. What do you do about a flat tire?

Collect a spare wheel, mount up a full size tire and carry it along with the jerry cans. Use the mini as a 2nd spare just in case. Can't sleep in the back with all the junk carried as emergency supplies, but thats what campgrounds and hotels are for.

[bratticus]

Can't you carry on in the open forum? Nothing you are posting is about current events which is what this forum is about.

[bratticus]

Temporary pipeline restart under way
CAREFULLY: Some will be allowed to spill to prevent total shutdown of Prudhoe operations.
By LISA DEMER - Anchorage Daily News
January 11th, 2011

... As temperatures dropped at Prudhoe Bay and the shutdown of the 800-mile pipeline continued Tuesday, federal and state regulators agreed to allow Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. to temporarily restart the flow of oil even though some will ooze out of a leaking secondary pipe.

The flow of oil back into the pipeline was to resume Tuesday night, said Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan.

That was expected to raise the temperature of oil in pipelines and tanks, avoid a more complex cold restart, avoid expected problems with freezing and wax buildup and allow North Slope operators to resume higher levels of production, Alyeska said.

"We are in the middle of the restart process. We are opening valves," Egan said around 8:30 p.m. The pipeline was shut down for more than 80 hours, the second-longest period in the pipeline's 33-year history.

STORAGE TANKS FILLING

Alyeska, which operates the pipeline that delivers oil from the North Slope to Valdez, has been grappling with a dead-of-winter shutdown since Saturday.

Risks of freezing pipelines and equipment increase the longer the flow is cut off, federal and state officials say. The shutdown has cost the state of Alaska more than $18 million a day in oil royalties and taxes.

Alyeska cut off the flow of crude to the pipeline just before 9 a.m. Saturday after workers discovered oil leaking from a pipe into the basement of a pump building at Pump Station 1 near Prudhoe Bay.

Oil field operators were directed to cut production to 5 percent of normal, or about 30,000 barrels a day. The limited amount of oil has been stored in two holding tanks at the pump station.

But the two tanks, which together hold only two-thirds of the 630,000 barrels produced on a normal day, were filling up. They'd be at capacity before the damaged area could be sealed off and a new 157-foot bypass line is built, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Just fabricating the new piping in Fairbanks is expected to take several more days, DEC said.

If the tanks reached their capacity, all North Slope production would have to be shut down, risking cold weather damage to wells and pipes, as well as the trans-Alaska pipeline itself, according to DEC.

As of Tuesday, the temperature of oil in the pipeline was 32 degrees in places and expected to drop a couple of degrees a day.

Asked whether water in the lines already was freezing, Egan said, "I think trying to restart today was to avoid that."

RISKS OF A RESTART

So far, 48 barrels or 2,000 gallons of oil has been recovered from the pump building.

The temporary restart will pump oil through damaged underground piping connected to the building, which may cause more leaking in the building, according to the state and federal regulators. So far no oil has been seen on the ground, but with the restart it could spill out of the building onto the soil, the DEC said.

"These kind of things -- especially in these kind of conditions -- there is never anything but difficult decisions," said Mark MacIntyre, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency working in the command center. "This just happens to be one where we feel like moving forward with that plan will help ultimately address the situation here and get everything back to normal sooner than anything else."
... skip ...

Normal? Like "normal aging collapsing pipeline normal?"

Meanwhile here comes increased demand:

Motiva plans Port Arthur vacuum unit restart-sources

... Motiva Enterprises plans to return a 180,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) vacuum distillation unit to operation Wednesday ... A 75,000 bpd vacuum unit was back in operation by Monday after restarting over the weekend. ...

Yes, there's been 180,000 + 70,000 = 250,000 barrels-a-day in missing demand since the accident.

... The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the Jan. 4 accident when the 200-foot (61-meter) tall crane toppled over backwards while lifting pipe as part of an expansion project aimed at boosting the Port Arthur refinery's capacity to 600,000 bpd by early 2012. ...

[bratticus]

Lawmaker questions Alaska pipeline opening
UPI
Jan. 13, 2011

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The operator of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline is called on to reveal how much oil might leak from the pipeline while it works on a bypass, a lawmaker said.

Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. shut down the major crude oil artery last weekend after workers found oil collected in the basement of a pump station. The company said it received regulatory approval to restart the pipeline on a temporary basis while workers build a bypass at the pump station where the leak occurred.

U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, asked Alyeska in a letter how much crude oil could spill from the broken Trans-Alaska pipeline.

... skip ...

He added that the latest problems with the 800-mile pipeline are "reminiscent" of the events that led to a March 2006 leak from the pipeline that released more than 6,000 barrels of oil into Alaska's Prudhoe Bay.

... skip ...

[bratticus]

Trans-Alaska Pipeline to shut down again; oil prices jump
January 13, 2011
By Phaedra Friend Troy -- Penn Energy

... skip ...

At noon on Wednesday, January 12, the oil flow through the TAPS line was 400,000 barrels per day. Producers were supplying anywhere from 330,000 to 350,000 barrels a day (roughly half the typical flow from North Slope production), and the remaining flow was coming from Pump Station 1 storage tanks.

... skip ...

The pipeline will again be shut down to prepare for the installation of the pipeline bypass on Friday, January 14. It is unclear whether the pipeline will be shut after the cleaning pig has been captured or once the bypass is ready to install at Pump Station 1.

The pipeline bypass installation is expected to take 36 hours; and should everything run smoothly, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System will be back up and running on Sunday, January 16.

... skip ...

Brent crude in London made a run for $100 a barrel, reaching nearly $99 a barrel in trading Wednesday; and on the NYMEX, the price of crude oil jumped to nearly $92 a barrel.

... snip ...

[bratticus]

Stuck pipeline pig expected to reach Pump Station No. 8 today; bypass line construction set for Friday
by Dermot Cole
Jan 13, 2011

... Meanwhile, the state revised and lowered its estimate about how much was leaking from a broken pipe encased in concrete at Pump Station No. 1 from 150 gallons per hour to 105 gallons per hour. ...

Trans Alaska Pipeline to Shut This Weekend for Bypass Install
By Aaron Clark and Paul Burkhardt - Bloomberg
January 13, 2011
... temperatures in Barrow, Alaska, dropped to a low of minus 11 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 24 Celsius) yesterday.

Workers hurry to finish piece for Alaska pipeline
Posted on January 13, 2011 by Tom Fowler

... Temperatures in Deadhorse, the base of operations for the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, were below freezing on Tuesday and forecast to drop as low as minus 20 degrees [Fahrenheit, -29 C] by today, according to the National Weather Service. ...

... Oil continues to leak from the area following the restart, but so far it appears to be contained inside a building at the pipeline’s first pump station, said officials with a joint state, federal and industry task force handling the accident. Vacuum trucks are collecting the oil. From Tuesday night to Wednesday night, about 53 barrels of oil had been collected. ...

[Plantagenet]

Its pretty amazing. After 40 years of production, Prudhoe is still supplying about 10% of all US domestic production.

Its too bad the democrats won't let Alaska develop ANWR.....there's room in the pipe now for another 1.5 million barrels/day.

[bratticus]

The week before the pipeline was shut stocks were already below 2010 levels.

The Countdown to $100 Oil
via: Wall Street Strategies - Seeking Alpha
January 14, 2011

By Conley Turner

... The Energy Department's Energy Information Agency (EIA) indicated on Wednesday that crude oil inventories in the U.S. declined for the week ended January 7, 2011. According to the EIA report, crude oil supplies declined by 2.2 million barrels and represented a 0.6 percentage point variance from the previous week. The consensus expectation was for a decline of approximately 300,000 barrels. As such, commercial crude oil inventories (which exclude those in the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve) now stands at 333.1 million barrels.

On a year-over-year basis, this figure is approximately 0.6 percentage points above the level during the corresponding period in 2010. The drawdown occurred at a time of year when historically there is typically a rise in oil stocks. The price of crude inched closer to the $100 per barrel level when it settled at $91.86 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, which was the highest level settled in 27 months. ...

[bratticus]

Its too bad the democrats won't let Alaska develop ANWR.....there's room in the pipe now for another 1.5 million barrels/day.

Not worth the effort?

Alaska's untapped oil reserves estimate lowered by about 90 percent
(CNN) -- The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate.

The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.

The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said. ...

[bratticus]

BP to Send Russian Oil to U.S. West After Alaska Pipeline Shuts
By Christian Schmollinger - Bloomberg
Fri Jan 14 09:53:39 GMT 2011

... BP booked the Helga Spirit to carry 100,000 metric tons of oil loading from the Russian Far East port of Kozmino on Jan. 20, according to Clarksons, the world’s largest shipping broker. The port is the delivery point for East Siberian Pipeline Oil. ...

[Plantagenet]

Its too bad the democrats won't let Alaska develop ANWR.....there's room in the pipe now for another 1.5 million barrels/day.

....the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska....

The NPRA is not ANWR. They are two different places.

Cheers!

[bratticus]

Its too bad the democrats won't let Alaska develop ANWR.....there's room in the pipe now for another 1.5 million barrels/day.

....the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska....

The NPRA is not ANWR. They are two different places.

Cheers!

So USGS would over-estimate NPRA but tell the honest truth about ANWR?

[Hawkcreek]

Its pretty amazing. After 40 years of production, Prudhoe is still supplying about 10% of all US domestic production.

Its too bad the democrats won't let Alaska develop ANWR.....there's room in the pipe now for another 1.5 million barrels/day.

I assume you are kidding.
The recent Alyeska Strategic Reconfiguration project lowered the pumping capacity of the line to 1.1 million barrels a day (unless they spent a hell of a lot more to reconfigure the reconfiguration - which would be even more costly since they have permanently removed some of the pump stations).
This says a lot about the beliefs of the oil companies on the slope --- they don't believe that any big new fields will be economical to develop in the future - and they are the ones with their hands on the real data.
The amusing thing about the recent leak is that Pump Station One - where the leak occurred - is the only station that was not reconfigured. When the dollars spent on the project went up to $750 million they decided to delay the completion of the PS 1 part of the project (the original estimate for the project was $212 million). If they would have competed the project, this leak probably would never have happened.

[bratticus]

Bypass pieces in place as Alyeska plans shutdown
by Dermot Cole - Fairbanks Daily
Jan 14, 2011

... a second shutdown is planned to begin tonight to install a bypass at Pump Station No. 1. The shutdown may begin around midnight, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, but the exact time is not known.

The department released a statement at 4 p.m. saying that fabrication and testing of the bypass pipe was finished today.

"Work crews at Pump Station 1 have placed some of the 24-inch pipe between the booster pump and metering buildings and through the wall of the metering building, as well as relocated electronic controls and cut a hole for the pipe in the wall of the booster pump building."

... Alyeska "anticipates that pre-assembly of all cold restart piping at Pump Stations 3, 5, 7, and 9 will be complete tonight. This piping will not be tied into the pump stations’ piping unless a cold restart is implemented. Temperatures to 30 below zero were hampering efforts to stage the cold restart auxiliary pump and additional piping at Pump Station 12, which APSC now estimates will take two more days to complete."