Oil leak contained as pipeline is restarted

After a four-day emergency shutdown, the trans-Alaska pipeline restarted at about 9 p.m. Tuesday and is expected to pump oil from the North Slope at a rate of roughly 400,000 barrels per day.

Federal and state regulators agreed Tuesday to allow Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. to temporarily restart the pipeline though it is causing more oil to leak from the faulty pipe at Pump Station 1 that prompted the major shutdown.

They agreed the restart was necessary as temperatures dropped at Prudhoe Bay and the shutdown of the 800-mile pipeline continued into its fourth day on Tuesday.

An Alyeska spokeswoman said this morning that the restart has been "very smooth," and the additional oil that has leaked from the pipe at Pump Station 1 has all been captured in a vault.

State spill response coordinator Tom DeRuyter said the restart so far is going as planned. "The pipeline is under intense scrutiny right now," he said.

The Alyeska spokeswoman, Michelle Egan, said the trans-Alaska pipeline will shut down again within the next several days to install new piping to bypass the leaking pipe. Today, production is expected to be around 400,000 barrels per day, but it could vary day to day, she said.

Between 8 p.m. Tuesday and 6 a.m. today, about 1,750 gallons of oil was diverted from the leaky pipe into the vault, she said.

Restarting the pipeline 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.

The pipeline shutdown started about 9 a.m. Saturday and lasted about 84 hours, the second-longest shutdown in the pipeline's 33-year history.

Oil producers at the more than two dozen nearby oil fields had cut production from about 630,000 barrels a day to about 30,000, with that limited flow going into storage tanks that by Tuesday were filling up.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.

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