says Commodore Owen C. S. Robertson, Arctic explorer and consultant on Arctic ice and navigation to both United States and Canadian Governments, like a mistress. You can do to her only what she wants you to do. To try to do more is courting disaster. He foresees day when oil reserves believed to lie beneath Canadian Arctic, as well as under and off Alaskan coast, will justify both a massive pipeline down Mackenzie Valley to Edmonton and a generation of successors to Manhattan, which blazed a trail for commercial vessels across Northwest Passage. Both have raised concerns for Arctic environment; either, Robertson warns, must be contemplated only in terms of what is possible in Arctic. Because they are both cheaper and quicker to build than pipelines, tankers will probably be first to bring Arctic oil to markets. And Canadian Government is seeking to establish rigid safety and pollution requirements, partly to protect Arctic environment from a massive oil spill and partly to establish her sovereignty over region's waterways (SN: 4/25, p. 420). At same time, submarine designers are offering oil companies giant tanker-subs, and shipbuilders have been asked for design studies on giant icebreaking tankers. declares L. A. C. 0. Hunt, chief of northern coordination division of Canada's Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the oil companies aren't committing themselves; they are thinking Oil companies working in Alaska despite setbacks, still want ot run 800 miles of 48-inch pipe to carry hot oil from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope to port of Valdez in south. And Canadian oil companies are confident they can build as easily a similar 1,600-mile line south across Canadian Arctic from Mackenzie Delta to Edmonton in Alberta. They even want to run a feeder across Yukon, so they can carry Alaskan oil to market. Canada's Hunt believes, with Robertson, that ecological problems to be created by construction of 1,600 miles of pipe across Canadian Arctic are virtually identical to those which would face builders of TransAlaska Pipeline System (SN: 2/14, p. 177). Nevertheless, neither Hunt, nor Richard M. Hill, director of Government's laboratory at Inuvik, in heart of Mackenzie Delta, which will be most affected by oil and pipeline development, believes that problems are either very serious or will interfere with development. There is a considerable ecological problem, says Hill, I'm not overly concerned. Any disruption Qf environment will be minor over all. I think it's been overblown, he says. best protection against oil spills, says Hill, economic. Oil spills are expensive, and oil companies don't want them any more than Government does. And he, as well as other Government officials, believes oil companies know enough about Arctic, and are sufficiently concerned, to take necessary precautions. Permafrost is a problem, confirms Imperial Oil's Exploration Manager R. A. Hemstock, I'm not afraid of it. can solve it; it's just a question of how. It may take a year to get it all ironed out, but there is general agreement in industry that pipe is feasible. The industry, backed by Hill and engineers, who are testing hot-oil pipe at Inuvik (SN: 5/2, p. 442), believes it will be possible to bury some of pipe, support some on a surface mound or pern of gravel and carry rest on piles. We would like to bury as much as we can, says Bob Hall, on-site manager for oil industry's experimental pipe loop. Then you can put it in and forget about it. Otherwise there's a greater maintenance problem. It is burial of pipes full of hot oil in permafrost that raises so many conservationist hackles. Alaskan studies indicate that such a buried pipe, almost regardless of insulation, would radiate heat into permafrost. This could create a massive cylinder of mud and slush length of buried pipe. This in turn could open a river of mud all along line, if it didn't wash support out from under pipe, causing a fracture and a river Gene Brush
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Jun 20, 2021
Seong-Rak Cho + 4
Open Access