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The Trans Alaskan Pipeline System

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Introduction
Large magnitude earthquakes occur on plate boundaries and they can produce hazards such as movement along faults, landslides, and tsunamis if the earthquake occurs close to a large enough body of water. In North America, the western coast is an active margin, meaning that it is home to earthquakes and volcanoes, a physical manifestation of the plate activity occuring. On November 3rd, 2002, in South-Central Alaska, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake ruptured along three faults; the Susinta Glacier, Denali, and Totschunda faults (Eberhart-Phillips et al., 2003). The seismic hazards associated with this event included a few large aftershocks and liquefaction, which is when saturated soil losses its strength and behaves like a liquid …show more content…

This pipeline was operational in June, 1997, under the ownership of Alyeska Pipeline Services Co. (Hall, William et al., 2003). At the time of the pipelines construction, there was no seismic criteria for the TAPS (Hall, William et al., 2003). In order to make sure the pipeline would survive an earthquake, Alyeska Pipeline Services Co. used mechanical engineers to make sure that the TAPS had the same seismic standards as the nuclear power industry, the offshore pipeline industry, and the military establishment (Hall, William et al., 2003). During the TAPS construction, it was designed to “withstand 6.1 m of horizontal offset, 1.5 m of vertical offset, and accelerations of 0.36 g” and a magnitude 5.5-8.5 earthquake as specified in the Stipulations for the Proposed Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System (Eberhart-Phillips et al., 2003; Boore, Joyner, and Coulter, 1972). Figure 1, located on page __, shows the pipeline’s route and the magnitudes of earthquakes the pipeline was constructed to withstand (Boore, Joyner, and Coulter, 1972). What figure 1 doesn’t illustrate is that the TAPS crosses three faults; the Denali, McGinnis Glacier, and Donnelly Dome (Hall, William et al., 2003). While this route is the most efficient at transporting the oil from Prudhoe Bay to the Gulf of Alaska, crossing three faults triples the likelihood of a major earthquake damaging the TAPS.
TAPS Construction The TAPS consists of 1287 km of pipeline that was designed

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