Permafrost melting, Alaskan pipeline threatened

Oil industry pumps oil, that warms the planet, and thaws the permafrost, damaging its pipelines. So it cools the permafrost.

 Permafrost melting, Alaskan pipeline threatened

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• The story: News reports indicated that the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, one of the world’s largest oil pipelines, could be in danger. The slope of permafrost where an 810-foot section of the pipeline is secured has started to shift as it thaws, causing braces holding up the pipeline to twist and bend.
• Permafrost's impact: Thawing permafrost threatens to jeopardize its structural integrity and raising the potential of an oil spill in a delicate and remote landscape. This is the first instance that pipeline supports have been damaged by “slope creep” caused by thawing permafrost. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources has approved the use of about 100 thermosyphons — tubes that suck heat out of permafrost — to keep the frozen slope in place.
• What is permafrost: Permafrost is ground that has remained completely frozen for at least two years straight and is found beneath nearly 85 percent of Alaska. In the last few decades, permafrost temperatures there have warmed as much as 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The state’s average temperature is projected to increase 2 to 4 degrees more by the middle of the century, and research says that with every 2 degree increase in temperature, 1.5 million square miles of permafrost could be lost to thawing.
• Earlier estimate: Permafrost changes were anticipated during the original design of the 800-mile pipeline, which opened in 1977 and runs from Prudhoe Bay in the north to Valdez on Prince William Sound in the south. There are about 1,24,000 thermosyphons arrayed along the path of the pipeline — a nod from its engineers to the importance of keeping the ground below it frozen. The tubes are bored from 15 to 70 feet into the permafrost in areas where warming might cause it to thaw. But those chillers only cool the permafrost directly below the pipeline, which holds the supports.
• Oil industry's irony: This plan to chill the permafrost with additional thermosyphons in the face of global warming, shows an obvious irony: The oil industry must act to keep the permafrost frozen to maintain an infrastructure that allows it to extract more of the fossil fuels that cause the warming. For how long can it continue doing so, is anybody's guess.

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