Keystone XL, Dakota Access prove pipelines have advanced way beyond wooden pipes of 1860s

NOTE: This article is part of our growing Evolution of Technology series.

“Winter, Alaska, Pipeline, Oil, Snow” by Robzor. Public domain.

On January 24th, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders reviving a pair of pipeline construction projects, which had grown controversial in recent years. Both the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline are now in position to be completed in the coming years after protests from environmental activist and Native American groups alike raising concerns over the potential risks of pollution or damage to sacred heritage sites.

The American public has been much more attuned to the risks of fossil fuel pipelines in the years since the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010 tainted the Gulf of Mexico by spilling nearly five million gallons of oil into its water. And yet, pipelines are an incredibly safe mode of transportation for fossil fuels overall according to industry reports. A 2016 Pipeline Performance Report & Strategic Plan released by the Association of Oil Pipe Lines (AOPL) indicates that 99.999 percent of crude oil and petroleum products delivered by pipeline reach their destination safely. Nearly two-thirds of all pipeline leaks in 2015 released less than five barrels. That may not be perfect, but it’s arguably safer than other modes of transportation for oil distribution. Statistics published by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) indicate that between 1997 and 2016, a total of 5,671 pipeline incidents had caused 310 deaths and 1,299 injuries. By contrast, the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster of July 2013 was a single event that caused the deaths of a presumed 47 people (five missing), destroyed 30 buildings and required the demolition of an additional 36 buildings because of petroleum contamination.

With fossil fuel pipeline construction projects back in the news, now’s a good time to revisit the Evolution of Technology series to take a long view look at the history of oil pipeline development. Nearly 150 years of development in the field has been supported by both the commercial success of the pipeline concept as well as the incredible importance that fossil fuels have in powering our modern world.

Drake and Kier Pave the Way for the Mega Oil Moguls of the Late 19th Century

Much of America’s history in domestic oil production and distribution goes back to Edwin Drake, the American who was the first person to turn an oil drilling operation into commercial success. In the late 1850s, Drake was hired by Seneca Oil Company to explore the potential of collecting oil from known deposits in the Titusville, PA area. Drake rejected the notion of digging trenches and instead decided to drill for oil, an unproven method at that time. More than a year passed and Seneca Oil had stopped funding the project, which Drake continued to fund himself, before oil was finally struck nearly 70 feet below the ground on August 28th, 1859. Of course, Drake’s successful oil drilling project wouldn’t have been much without the oil refinery innovations of Samuel Martin Kier, the American inventor and businessman credited with discovering how to refine crude oil into kerosene lamp oil, creating the first major commercial use for crude oil.

Now that American businesses could collect oil in an effective way, the need to transport that oil to refinery plants became the next hurdle which the industry needed to overcome. In 1862, the first oil pipeline was constructed in Oil Creek Valley, PA, ten miles away from Titusville. It was constructed of wood and transported oil up to 1,000 feet using gravity to move the oil. The first iron pipeline was laid in 1863, traveling a distance of two and a half miles and using pumps to force oil along the path. According to Smithsonian, the first successful oil pipeline to operate without major performance issues was constructed in 1865, a wrought iron pipeline which transported 1,950 gallons to 2,000 gallons of oil each day over a five-mile distance. Pipeline development continued despite interference from teamsters, early labor unions which sometimes damaged pipelines on purpose as they posed a threat to jobs in oil transportation at that time.

Through the latter half of the 19th century, the oil drilling and refining industries became a major industry which attracted a great deal of investment in no small part because pipelines made it easier to get oil from drill sites to refineries. The economic importance of oil as fuel and the growth of an infrastructure for distribution developed by many companies privately led to the massive success of Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil’s founder and one of the wealthiest Americans ever who gained his first foothold in the oil industry by purchasing oil refineries and making their production process much more efficient and profitable.

Pipeline Production Grows With America and Helps the Allies Win World War II

Rockefeller and Standard Oil were so successful that the company was split into 90 different firms in 1911 after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States that Standard Oil was guilty of monopolizing the petroleum industry through anticompetitive and abusive acts.

Standard Oil may have been the largest monopoly in the history of America’s oil industry but the company was broken up before the industry experienced perhaps its greatest boon: the growth of the consumer automobile. During the 1920s, the total mileage of all pipeline laid in the United States tripled to 115,000 miles. In 1925, the first gas pipeline composed entirely of welded steel was laid by Magnolia Gas of Dallas, Texas. The pipeline stretched for 217 miles between northern Louisiana and Beaumont, TX. The westward population shift in America also began to push fossil fuel pipelines westward by the 1930s.

The need for a thriving domestic oil & gas industry became clear during World War II, when oil tanker ships were frequent targets of Axis powers as a threat to America’s productivity. It’s very possible that America’s ability to help the Allies turn the tide of WWII was due to the construction of two pipelines, Big Inch and Little Big Inch. These two pipelines were constructed between 1942 and 1944 as emergency measures, bringing petroleum products from the oil rich fields of Texas up through Illinois and over to New Jersey where industrial manufacturers needed oil & gas to contribute to the war effort. The project cost $95 million at the time and involved the laying of 24-inch and 20-inch diameter pipelines over a distance of 1,200 miles. Big Inch and Little Big Inch were instrumental in providing fuel resources which were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean for use in Operation Overlord, the military code name for the Battle of Normandy, also known as D-Day.

The decades after WWII saw massive worldwide expansions of corporate exploration into fossil fuel sources in foreign countries. Oil production, which had been the sole province of the United States from the industry’s earliest days, began taking root in the Middle East, South America, Canada and in offshore sites near China and the Caribbean.

Trans-Alaska Pipeline Kicks Off High Tech Modernization of Pipelines

In March 1968, a good deal of excitement returned to the American oil industry with the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field on Alaska’s North Slope. Its reserves originally contained 25 billion barrels of oil but its location posed some interesting engineering challenges. Not only did the oil need to be sent nearly 1,000 miles from one of the northernmost locations in Alaska, it had to traverse the extreme cold of frozen tundra landscapes.

By 1977, the first barrels of oil from Prudhoe Bay were delivered to the southern coast of Alaska through the 800-mile long Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), a pipeline which required a bevy of innovative solutions to handle challenges posed by Alaska’s terrain. To secure the pipeline against risks posed by fault lines crossed by the pipeline, such as the Denali Fault, the pipeline was built above ground with slider supports to give the pipeline some flexibility. Pipeline laid above ground is protected with several inches of fiberglass thermal insulation and covered with aluminum sheet metal. Environmental concerns involving harm to the permafrost landscape crossed by the pipeline were solved by cooling the oil to 120°F before sending it through TAPS. The need to keep the interior of such a long pipeline clean was achieved by the creation of smart pipeline inspection gauges (PIGs), modern versions of which have increased data collection capacity to measure pipe deformation, flow rates and metal loss. Chemical engineers also developed compounds which helped improve the flow rate of oil through TAPS despite cold temperatures surrounding the pipeline. At its peak in 1988, TAPS delivered 2 million barrels of oil per day.

The momentum towards domestic production of oil & gas within North America has perked up in recent years with development of petroleum collection activities in the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota as well as the Athabasca oil sands of northeastern Alberta. Both the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines, which will transport oil from Bakken and Athabasca, respectively, will each be nearly 1,200 miles in length once completed. Pipeline engineers continue to work on technological improvements that will allow the pipelines to operate with the highest degree of safety possible. For example, the Keystone construction team had to find a way to transport oil safely underneath rivers, including the Missouri and Platte rivers. To achieve this, engineers made use of horizontal drilling techniques first developed to collect oil from the Bakken Formation, sending the oil through stable bedrock situated hundreds of yards below the river itself. This way, even if a leak were to develop, it would be seemingly impossible to experience the kind of oil pollution that came with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Monitoring systems including process control systems, diagnostic software and emergency shut-offs at a central command center which collects data from external leak and spill sensors, providing additional monitoring beyond typical air and ground-based visual checks.

Share

Warning & Disclaimer: The pages, articles and comments on IPWatchdog.com do not constitute legal advice, nor do they create any attorney-client relationship. The articles published express the personal opinion and views of the author as of the time of publication and should not be attributed to the author’s employer, clients or the sponsors of IPWatchdog.com.

Join the Discussion

One comment so far.

  • [Avatar for Earl Richards]
    Earl Richards
    February 13, 2017 09:57 am

    The KXL pipeline has to be stopped, because a toxic, tar sands spill down into the Ogallala Aquifer will poison the drinking water for millions, which is worse than a weapon of mass destruction, and will destroy the agriculture of the Great Plains states.