Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
Oil is leaking at rate of less than two gallons a minute from a feeder line at Trans Alaska Pump Station 1. Response crews are using a vacuum truck to suck up the oil as it accumulates into the basement of a pump house, where the leak was first discovered last Saturday. A three-day shutdown that followed ended Tuesday night when the pipeline was re-started to prevent system wide freeze up problems. A fix for the leaky feeder line is in the works. A 157-foot pipe to bypass the bad line is expected to be installed during a 36-hour shutdown planned for this weekend. The mainline is currently running at a 400,000 barrel a day rate, about 200,000 barrels short of the pre-incident level, but enough to relieve build up of crude in Prudhoe Bay storage tanks, and to allow North Slope wells to operate at closer to normal flow.
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