34 in wide Alaska pipeline loses 20000 gal to 1/4 inch corroded hole

[papau]

It is at a point in the line covered by a mound of gravel designed to let caribou cross the pipeline.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spill9mar09,0,6591927.story?track=tottext

Crude Leak Plugged in Alaska Pipeline
Fiercely cold conditions are hampering efforts to clean up the oil spill from a corroded pipe.
By Sam Howe Verhovek
Times Staff Writer

March 9, 2006

SEATTLE — At least 20,000 gallons of crude oil have spilled from a corroded pipeline near Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska, state officials said Wednesday, adding that cleanup crews were hampered by severe conditions such as wind-chill temperatures of 50 degrees below zero.

<snip>An official estimate of the size of the spill is not expected until today, Giguere said. Cleanup crews have recovered about 58,000 gallons (or approximately 1,380 barrels) of crude oil mixed with snow from the frozen tundra, she said, adding that no determination had been made on how much of it was crude or how severe the environmental impact would be.

<snip>In 2001, a man fired his hunting rifle into the pipeline, creating a leak that spilled about 285,000 gallons onto the tundra and led to a $7-million cleanup. Authorities arrested the 37-year-old hunter and he was convicted on federal weapons charges; it was not considered a terrorist incident. Pipeline operators say that it has been shot at through the years at least 50 times, but that the incident was the first time a bullet had punctured the double-steel-walled pipeline.

The spill on the North Slope occurred in a "feeder line" to the main pipeline, causing a shutdown of that line and a temporary drop in overall production. <snip>

In 1999, six pipeline employees wrote anonymously to federal officials arguing that neglect and maintenance cuts on the pipeline could lead to disaster. "It won't be a single gasket, or valve, or wire, or procedure, or person that will cause the catastrophe," the employees wrote. "It will be a combination of small, perhaps seemingly inconsequential events and conditions that will lead to the accident that we're all dreading and powerless to prevent."

[phantom power]

1. Clearly, the caribou hate America.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. Iceworms are known to hide terrorists and nukes!