Environmental Groups Seek to Shut Down Trans-Alaska Pipeline

An oil transit pipeline runs across the tundra to a flow station at the Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska's North Slope, in this file photo. Al Grillo, File/AP Photo

Environmental activists have filed a legal petition with the federal government in hopes of shutting down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which at its peak transported 25 percent of the oil produced in America.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline “is approaching the end of its useful life due to mounting climate change-driven damages to both the aging pipeline infrastructure and the entire Arctic ecosystem, as well as the imperative for the United States to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel-based energy,” the petition states.

The coalition filing the petition includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Environment, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The petition was filed with Debra Haaland, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Stretching for 800 miles with a diameter of 48 inches, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is among the world’s largest pipelines, delivering oil extracted in Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez, the northernmost ice-free port in North America. It was proposed after massive deposits of oil were discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, and was completed in 1977 at a cost of $8 billion.

Today, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is owned by a consortium of companies including BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Unocal Pipeline Company, and Koch Alaska Pipeline Company.

Because of its size, the pipeline needed approval from the federal government granting it “right of way” through federal lands, which it received under the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973.

The coalition of environmental groups now say the environmental analysis under which the pipeline was originally approved neither takes climate change issues into account nor does it “properly examine pipeline operations’ harm to caribou, polar bears, and other vulnerable wildlife and subsistence resources in Alaska,” Pacific Environment stated in a press release.

The group requested “the immediate initiation and completion of a new supplemental environmental impact statement” for the pipeline, adding that “because the only rational conclusion of that analysis will be a managed phasedown of the pipeline, drafting an updated Dismantlement, Removal, and Restoration plan should also promptly commence.”

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy responded by calling the groups “anarchists” in a post on X, while saying their argument contains “glaring logical fallacies.”

Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research and former chief of staff for the House of Representatives Resources Committee, said he expects the petition will be rejected by the Bureau of Land Management, the relevant authority within the Interior Department.

“There is a huge amount at stake, because if the pipeline gets closed, all of the energy on the North Slope of Alaska, and there’s enormous quantities of oil, gas, and coal, basically get cut off,” Mr. Kish told The Epoch Times.

But, he predicts the environmental coalition will take further action.

“When [the Bureau of Land Management] does reject it, they immediately go to court, and then they just go venue shopping for a federal judge. And there are plenty of them who would gladly shut this down,” he said.

‘Sue and Settle’

The efforts to shut down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline may proceed to a phase known as “sue and settle,” he said, in which plaintiffs bring suit against the federal government and the government reaches a settlement with plaintiffs, giving in to their demands.

“It’s one of the biggest loopholes around the Constitution that’s out there, where the government can have some friends sue them and then settle and give them what they wanted,” Mr. Kish said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Interior for a response to the petition, but the department declined to comment.

According to Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, “Northern Alaska is a world-class petroleum province that includes some of the most prospective onshore regions remaining in North America. Despite this potential, the North Slope remains underexplored.”

While the pipeline at its peak moved more than 2 million barrels of oil per day in 1988, throughput fell to fewer than 500,000 barrels per day as of April 2024.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge likely holds 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil. In January 2021, however, the Biden administration issued an executive order to place a temporary moratorium on federal oil and natural gas leasing in the wildlife refuge.

According to Trans-Alaska Pipeline System owners, the pipeline spends $60 million annually and has dedicated 300 professionals to prevent oil spills through the the Ship Escort Response Vessel System, which escorts oil tankers through the Prince William Sound to the Gulf of Alaska. This includes response vessels if a tanker becomes distressed and pre-stationed oil spill-response equipment for rapid response, as well as personnel and equipment stationed along the pipeline to respond to issues.

In addition to the oil pipeline, there are also efforts to build a natural gas pipeline to transport trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope, and these efforts may also cease if the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System were to be shut down.

The Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a public corporation of the State of Alaska that seeks to develop Alaska’s infrastructure for natural gas distribution, estimates that the North Slope contains about 35 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, but could contain more than 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.