RUN Alaskan RUN!

But not so fast, don’t panic, as you have plenty of time to get out of harm’s way without cause for hysteria. Isn't that a disease? And don't drink the water. See, it’s bleeding real slow like, so this attack progresses at a snail’s pace. I am talking the oil leaking out of the Trans-Alaska-Pipeline. Look, you may not see glarbs of goo, like when that John Wayne wannabe went crazy with his piece and back-hand pistol whipped that pipe to failure, thus allowing crude oil to belch for hours upon hours upon the tundra. See, I am talking small fractures in the 35-year old pipe that has endured with some success that same amount of thaw cycles – brutal cold to luke warm then back again. It has taken its toll on the structural integrity which was designed for a 10-year life cycle, now approaching 3-times that design limit and nature wins out in this case no matter how hard man tries to trump normalcy. Sure all those hazardous chemicals injected to thwart off internal erosion have worked to some extent, but it isn't a bulletproof plan of attack and like occurred at Pump Station #1, wherein all the below ground pipe was cast in concrete so leaks would never happen, guess what, that design failed after only 5-years in operation. It wasn't supposed to ever happen! And the entire Atigan Pass followed the same failed design! So let’s be real, of course there are leaks in that line, possibly hundreds of hairline cracks that are today under ideal conditions weeping crude oil day in day out, once again at a snail’s pace car one drop at a time. But it's under pressure, so why isn't it squirting out? True, but when that oil flows to the mountain tops, we find pinch-points wherein the pressure can be equal to the outside pressure, “zero”. So in this case, the oil would be allowed to bleed out one drop at a time and go undetected for, well years! I once worked for the pipeline gang, so have a good idea of the cover-up. Now small leaks would go un-noticed, go undetected by the finest of technologies, with the loose oil getting carried away far and away following the proverbial out-of-sight-out-of-mind mindset - especially when the spring break-up commences. That pipe underneath the SAG river, bye bye oil, see you in the whale calving fiords! And even though contrary to popular attorney client confidentiality wherein the operator tries to convince the regulators – and laughs all the way home after a good day of deceit – it don’t have a working system that can detect leaks. Case in point. Just the other day a tank of reducing agent went missing, crawling down the pipeline like a giant snot. Had the operator had a working system, it would have been detected and something would have been done before the big snot ended up at the Koch Brother's refinery over in Santa's Land. Wait just a minute, maybe this was payback from the Obama office, a giant bugger for Charlie! OK, enough of the childish stuff, as this is serious business. But the “Giant Snot”, it went unnoticed and screwed up all the transport accounts. Yet not to worry, as this circus employs a magician. This guy reminds me of Phineas J. Whoopee on steroids or Viagra as with the stroke of a magic wand and with help from that 3DBB, he can make everything balance out and erase any discrepancies that would warrant shutting down the line – like for a true leak. And that magic wand has been erasing those hair-line crack leaks for years. And the air surveillance to detect leaks from planes or helicopters traversing the 800-mile long pipe from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez with sophisticated eavesdropping instruments, it don’t work any longer because the ground is colder then the stuff in the pipe, and in some places during the year at the same temperature - so it don’t work. It can't work and that was always the operator's trump card, oversight by humans that kept the regulators at bay with respect to questioning the integrity of the system designed to detect leaks and protect the environment. Bottom-line, the TAPS does not have a system that can detect small leaks. And because the leak detection system is “Sectionalized”, it is a loss cause. Many hairline cracks would go about their business of bleeding out the crude as a nasty benzene ridden crapathon, drop by drop and finally be deposited far and away from the pipe proper. So it isn't a Joe Hazzlewood type of atrocity, but a real slow like disease that will some day show its ugly face. Bottom-line, without the oil traveling fast and maintaining enough heat so infra-red technology can pinpoint a leak through “optical temperature difference imaging”, there is no way in hell that the operator can detect a leak unless it is spraying on the tundra. The sad thing, the ROW permit says do or die. So the fact that the pipeline is still in operation without such a system, goes to show who wears the panties in this goat rope! And when I threw this scenario out to the regulators questioning the integrity of the LDS – NOT Latter Day Saints but Leak Detection System - at first they were receptive to a dialogue, until they found out I understood their bluff and that stopped all correspondences. Now there is a simple solution that could have rested my case. See, the operator shall be required to perform a “void test” which is pretty common in the normal pipeline industry – down in the lower 48 where regulators fear not for performing their duties. Basically, it works like this. Oil is directed away from the line at a controlled rate, say from a valve to a tank, or “sucker truck”. Then the regulators watch to see if the “Leak Detection System” catches a leak based on time intervals and loss of product. In this case, the regulations require the system to detect a leak of 1% in a 24-hour time period. If it fails, guess what, the regulators place a “Red Tag” on the line and give the operator some limited time to fix the problem. So if so easy a test to test the integrity of the system that is required by law and state statues, what gives to denying my request to protect the environment, why not go along with a simple “void test”? Because, it doesn't work even when a void test could be accomplished tomorrow by short circuiting the oil through the meters at the North Pole facility, it would amount to almost no effort at all to perform such a test. In fact, it could prove me wrong and work, case closed. And we all know why not by now. Imagine a regulator telling Parnell the money spigot was shut-off! So maybe I should re-title this write, to “Hide Regulator Hide”.