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Oil pipeline, tankers back in action
Tankers resumed loading oil as operations began a tentative return to normal Dec. 30 at Valdez, where high winds had forced a halt to loading since the weekend.
Also early Dec. 30, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline started back up. The 800-mile pipeline, which carries crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to the tanker port at Valdez, was shut down for six hours beginning around 8 p.m. Dec. 29 because ships couldn’t load and because oil storage tanks at the port were nearly full.
Regulations forbid tanker loading when winds are high and water sloshes over boom deployed around docked ships to protect against oil spills.
Weather remained dodgy Dec. 30 but one tanker, the Polar Resolution, part of the Conoco Phillips fleet, was able to begin loading.
Two more ships were standing by, said Matt Carle, spokesman for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which runs the pipeline and port.
Tanks at 91 percent Storage tanks at Valdez were filled to 91 percent of capacity at the time of shutdown, Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan said Dec. 29.
Oil companies on the North Slope began to throttle back on oil production Dec. 28, but pipeline operators finally decided the six-hour shutdown was necessary due to the storage crunch and the inability to load ships, Egan said.
This isn’t the first time the pipeline has been idled due to weather menacing the tanker dock. High wind and waves forced a shutdown in November 2006.
The pipeline has been moving about 750,000 barrels of North Slope crude oil per day through December.
The operator, Alyeska, is an Anchorage-based consortium of companies that own shares in the pipeline, which was started up in 1977. The owners are BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Koch Industries.
BP, Conoco and Exxon each operate a fleet of huge, double-hulled tankers that haul oil from Valdez to West Coast refineries.
—Anchorage Daily News and wire reports
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