In this episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, host Russel Treat speaks with Dave Norton of Hawk Consultants to mark the 50th anniversary of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The conversation explores the history and legacy of the project—from its groundbreaking construction and technological innovations to its enduring economic and environmental impact on Alaska. Norton also discusses the work of the Alaska Oil and Gas Historical Society in preserving industry history and reflects on the state’s future, including potential developments like the Alaska gas line project.

Alaska Pipeline Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Dave Norton is a Senior Advisor with The Hawk Group, bringing over 40 years of experience in pipeline construction and operations, including leadership roles as Manager of Engineering for Alyeska Pipeline and Commissioner with the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Connect with Dave on LinkedIn.
• Alaska Oil and Gas Historical Society – A nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of oil and gas development in Alaska through archives, interviews, and exhibits.
  • Pipeline Pioneer Interviews – Recorded oral histories capturing experiences and insights from early pipeline engineers, workers, and leaders, collected by the Alaska Oil and Gas Historical Society.
• Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) – A major crude oil pipeline that transports oil from Alaska’s North Slope to the marine terminal in Valdez; one of the largest and most significant infrastructure projects in North America.
• Alyeska Pipeline Service Company – The consortium that owns and operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline; responsible for its engineering, operations, and maintenance.
• North Slope – The region of northern Alaska where major oil fields are located, including Prudhoe Bay; the starting point for TAPS.
• Right-of-Way (ROW) – The legal authorization to construct and operate the pipeline across state, federal, or private lands.
• EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is an independent organization within the federal U.S. government designed to take measures to protect people and the environment.
  • NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) was signed into law on January 1, 1970. NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions prior to making decisions.
• Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) – A formal report required under NEPA that evaluates potential environmental effects of a major infrastructure project and proposes mitigation measures.
• State Oil and Gas Conservation Commission – A state regulatory body that oversees oil and gas exploration, production, and conservation to ensure safety, environmental protection, and resource management.
• Denali Fault Earthquake (2002) – A 7.2 magnitude earthquake that tested TAPS’s seismic design; the pipeline performed as intended without major damage or spills, validating its engineering integrity.
• Seismic Design – Engineering design methods used to ensure that pipeline infrastructure can withstand earthquake activity without loss of containment or structural failure.
• Cathodic Protection – A corrosion prevention technique used on buried or submerged metal structures like pipelines to extend their operational life.
• Integrity Management – A regulatory and operational framework for ensuring the safety and reliability of pipeline assets through inspections, maintenance, and risk assessment.
• Asset Management – The systematic process of maintaining, upgrading, and operating physical assets (like pipelines) effectively throughout their lifecycle.
• Throughput – The volume of crude oil transported through the pipeline per day; measured in barrels per day (bpd).
• Fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing) – A technique used to extract oil and gas from shale formations by injecting high-pressure fluid to fracture the rock and release hydrocarbons.
• LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) – Natural gas that has been cooled into a liquid form for ease of storage and transport, particularly for export markets.
• Final Investment Decision (FID) – The point at which a project’s sponsors formally commit to moving forward with full-scale financing and construction.
• Glenfarne / 8 Star Project – The developer and joint venture entity pursuing the Alaska Gasline Project to transport natural gas from the North Slope to liquefaction and export facilities.
• Alaska Gasline Project – A proposed pipeline project intended to move natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to global LNG markets.
• Economic Impact Analysis – A study or presentation assessing how a major project (like TAPS) has influenced the economy, infrastructure, and population growth of Alaska.
• Yukon River Bridge – A critical infrastructure asset that enabled access for pipeline construction, carrying both the highway and the pipeline across the Yukon River.
• Caribou Migration – An environmental consideration during pipeline development; concerns that the pipeline would disrupt caribou herds were later found to be unfounded.
• Haul Road – The supply and access road constructed to support pipeline construction on the North Slope, now known as the Dalton Highway.
• Valdez Marine Terminal – The southern terminus of TAPS where crude oil is loaded onto tankers for transport to refineries.
• Right-of-Way Renewal (2002–2003) – The process of reauthorizing TAPS’s land-use permits after its initial 30-year operational period, requiring a new EIS and federal/state review.

Alaska Pipeline Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:

Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast”, Episode 411, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, operations and compliance software for the pipeline operator to address safety program management, control room management, and field operations. Find out more about POEMS at enersyscorp.com.

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Announcer: The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. And now, your host, Russell Treat.

Russel:

Thanks for listening to thePipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time, and to show the appreciation, we give away a customized Yeti Tumbler to one listener every episode.

Now, sidebar, listeners. You have to submit a form on the website to win. The current winner has been on me at conferences for a while now about why he hadn’t won a Yeti, and I told him he needed to submit a form. Congratulations, Richard Delaney with National Grid. You have a Yeti on the way. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, we’re going to speak with Dave Norton of Hawk Consultants about the 50th anniversary of the Alaskan Pipeline. Dave Norton, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Dave Norton: Thank you, Russel. It’s good to hear your sweet voice again. It’s been a while.

Russel: [laughs]

Russel: It has been a while. For the listeners, Dave and I worked together on a project for about, supposed to be a four-year project, ended up being about eight-years project, so it was double your pleasure, double your fun.

Dave: That’s right.

Russel: [laughs]

Russel: Look, before we dive in, would you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into pipelining and such?

Dave:

Sure. My origin story is that I graduated from college in 1974, not knowing what I wanted to do. I had a degree in engineering, but serendipitously, I got a job working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline construction. Actually, it was on the haul road construction that was built in anticipation of the pipeline.

One day, I was in Houston, and a week and a half later, I was on the North Slope. It was quite a journey, quite a experience, some snot-nosed engineer like myself, working on construction of the largest construction project in North America history.

That’s where I started working there, and then I was working for Michael Baker Jr. as a field engineer. After the whole reconstruction, I was an above-ground pipeline field engineer for construction through startup. Then I got a job directly with Alyeska Pipeline, the operators of the pipeline. I was with them for many, many years and ended up being the manager of engineering for Alyeska.

I left them and became a commissioner at the State Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. That was quite a fun job. After that, I started consulting and consulted back to Alyeska in pipelines and other issues up in Alaska, and with you, Russel, and some other projects. I’ve had quite a experience for the last 50 years with pipelines, especially in Alaska.

Russel: It reminds me of a Johnny Bush song, I’m an old pipeliner. [laughs]

Dave: Yeah, definitely. I was up in Alaska recently talking to the Alyeska’s engineering department, and they wanted me to give a presentation that I gave up at this historical conference. It was funny. A lot of these guys looked old, Russel. As a matter of fact, they said, “Well, we’re not that old. You’re old.” [laughs]

Russel: That’s right. From inside the spaceship, I look a lot younger than I do when you look at me from outside the spaceship, right?

Dave: [laughs]

Dave: That’s right.

Russel: That’s a great segue. I wanted to ask you about this Oil and Gas Historical Society in Alaska. What’s going on there? What caused that to become a thing? What’s your involvement with that?

Dave:

I’m glad you asked about that because it’s exciting. Most states that have oil and gas production have a oil and gas historical society and a museum, say, or more than one. Texas is an example.

Alaska didn’t have a historical society that focused on oil and gas history until about two and a half, three years ago. We started one up through the Alaska Alliance up there with Rebecca Logan. Our remit, of course, was to collect and preserve history about oil and gas development in Alaska.

Oil and gas development started back in the early 1900s with a refinery in Catala on the Gulf Coast, but mainly it started in the 50s with discovery of oil on Kenai Peninsula and in Cook Inlet. Then, of course, it really took off with the discovery of oil on the North Slope in ’69.

All that being said, our society tries to collect memorabilia, objects, and especially we’ve got this project going of collecting video interviews with industry pioneers that had something to do with oil and gas development, and with a lot of pipeline pioneers. That video archive it’s on our website. You’ll probably give the website, Russel.

The archives on their website, there’s 40-some-odd interviews right now on there. Actually, that archive won an award here last month up in Fairbanks at the Alaska Historical Society. They’re the overall ones, and they have an annual conference. This one was in Fairbanks, and our society, Well and Gas Society, won an award for the efforts we put into collecting these video archives.

Russel:

The work you guys are doing is really awesome. I find it surprising, actually, that it’s only been within the last couple of years that Alaska had any kind of historical society around oil and gas because it’s been such a big deal in Alaska for the last, gosh, 50-plus years now.

[crosstalk]

Dave:

You’re right about that, Russel. It’s absolutely right. People were sitting around saying, “Hey, wait a minute. We’re losing all this history,” so we started collecting it. I’m on the board of the society. It’s been a real blast, Russel, I’ve got to tell you, to go back and talk to some of these guys and collect some of these strange things that people have stuffed in their garages.

It’s been really fun. We had a contingent of our board go down to Midland last, I forget when it was, within the past year, to go look at the Midland Oil and Gas Museum down there, which was the premier one. I don’t know, have you ever been there, Russel?

Russel: Yeah, a number of times, actually. It’s quite good, and they’ve got some cool old drilling rigs and such. It’s a neat place to go and see where the roots of our business come from.

Dave: I’ve never been there, but a couple of our guys went down there. I’ve been to the one in Kilgore, the East Texas oil field.

Russel: There’s one in Beaumont. There’s one in Tulsa. That’s a pretty good one as well.

Dave:

Yeah. One of our goals with the society up there, other than collecting this information, is eventually have a museum to display it in. We’ve got some space identified in Anchorage, and it would be focused on maybe make it accessible to the tourism trade coming through to go look at something like that.

When people come up to Alaska, they usually pass through Anchorage, and they want to see the pipeline. They’ve heard all about it, seen photos of the RUG round section, which is iconic of the state. When we say “Well, sure, you’ll see it. You’ve got to drive out to Glenallen. That’s the closest place. That’s a three-hour drive,” then they lose interest. [laughs]

We’re trying to put it all together. We’re also working with our folks up in Fairbanks, which were ground zero for construction and operations of the pipeline.

The pipeline, as you know, and the rest of the oil and gas developers on the slope and producers all have their headquarters in Anchorage, but the operations centers and support for labor and craft comes out of Fairbanks. Fairbanks has got a lot of really interesting, cool-looking stuff up there.

They just had a celebration in Fairbanks to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Yukon River Bridge that was built to facilitate access for the construction of the pipeline. It was a joint venture of the Alyeska Pipeline and the state of Alaska Bridge people. It opened in 1975, I believe, for truck traffic. I believe the pipeline was installed on that bridge in 1976.

Russel: When was first flow on the Alaskan pipeline?

Dave: First flow was July of 1977, and the first tanker left Valdez in August of 1977.

Russel: I graduated high school in ’76, and I remember very well. So much of the news at that time was about the Alaskan pipeline and the construction and the technology and the challenge of building that pipeline in that environment. It was pretty much everything that was being done on that pipeline at that time was cutting-edge technology.

Dave: It was cutting-edge. I can tell you a couple of stories about that. I’ll tell you a joke right now. You’re talking about how you got out of high school, and it was in the news and all that. Godzilla, you’ve heard of Godzilla, haven’t you, Russel?

Russel: Of course.

Dave:

Movie star. He kept pounding the movies. He kept pounding Tokyo to smear the rings. In 1977, Marvel Comics, you know Marvel, they got access or signed up Godzilla and had the first comic book. Godzilla comic book was in 1977 and the pipeline was topical in the news at the time.

The storyline in that comic book, and I’ve got a copy of it, was that Godzilla came out of the Arctic Ocean and was stomping down the pipeline, tearing it up by its roots, finally getting into Valdez and smashing Valdez to smithereens.

Russel: You should donate that comic to the historical museum there, Dave.

Dave: Absolutely, Russel. It’s there right now.

Russel: What are you going to do with that if you don’t give it to the museum, right?

Dave:

It’s quite a big thing. You can get one yourself on eBay, probably for $1,000, but I’ve got one right here. Anyway, the story I was going to tell you about the technological achievements of the pipeline was that, besides the technology, permission was, that was the very first project that was covered by the newly passed National Environmental Protection Act.

It required environmental impact statements for large projects. TAPS was the first project to be under that rule, and nobody knew what an EIS was, so they just made it up, and it was gigantic volumes and volumes. It was required in order to get grants and leases right away from the feds and the state, because the majority of the pipeline crosses state and federal land, very little private land.

Anyway, it was only good for 30 years, the grants and lease. After 30 years of operation, which was about 2002 or 2003, it had to be renewed. The right-of-way had to be renewed, had to go through another environmental impact statement. I was working on that as a technical lead, and it was pretty interesting going back to the old days and seeing what they predicted.

It was a pretty straightforward project because normally EIS, you’re trying to predict what the impacts are going to be. In this particular case, we could go back and look at actual impacts and project them forward, so it was pretty straightforward. The only hang-up, or one of the only hang-ups, was that seismic design.

Back in 1970s, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline seismic design was state-of-the-art. In 2002, the feds were saying, “Yeah, it was state-of-the-art back then, but what about now? You look at earthquakes in California and other places where they’ve seismically braced and retrofitted buildings and freeways. What are you guys going to do about that?”

We were at loggerheads a little bit until about 2002 of November, there was this big earthquake on the Danali Fault. It was 7.2 or something like that, and it ripped through the Denali Fault, which crossed the pipeline. The pipeline had a special design for that, and the pipeline operated just like it was designed, and no damage to speak of occurred, and no spills.

After that, there was no more questions about the EIS. We got our permit.

Russel:

One of the things I’ve always heard, and you’ll probably know if this is true or not, is that one of the contentious things when the original construction was going on and the original EIS was being done is what was that going to do to the caribou herds? Would it upset their migration and all that kind of stuff?

There was a lot of speculation that the caribou population would be negatively impacted by the Alaskan pipeline. It was the opposite that actually occurred, that the herds actually grew because they hung out by the pipeline to stay warm. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know if that’s true.

Dave: The herd populations grow and crash all the time, but in the period of time the pipeline’s been operating, there has been no crash. The Porcupine herd is the name of the major one up there, and it’s grown. You’re right, there is a lot of them hanging around the pipeline and the work pad primarily to get out of the mosquitoes.

Russel: [laughs]

Russel: I hadn’t heard that, but I do know the mosquitoes are ferocious in Alaska. That much I know.

Dave: They’re nasty critters, I tell you.

Russel: Exactly. Look, I wanted to talk to you about one other thing while I’ve got you here, and that is the annual conference where you got the award. I understand that you were involved with an economic presentation talking about what the economic impact of the pipeline and oil and gas in general has been on the Alaskan economy.

Dave:

I’m glad you asked me that. That conference, I made a presentation, and it was a counterfactual thought experiment, you’d call it, about what would Alaska be like, the state of Alaska, what would it be like for the last 50-odd years without the Trans-Alaska pipeline. What was the economic impact in reverse?”

I made this presentation in conjunction with Scott Goldsmith, who is an economist from the University of Alaska. Spoiler alert, Russel, it would not be pretty. [laughs] Scott has this concept, he calls it the three-legged stool.

If you look at the economic output of Alaska, generally speaking, oil and gas is about one-third of the economic consequences of Alaska, the federal government, both military and civilian spending, is another third, and the remaining third is everything else, fishing, mining, tourism, everything you can think of, timber. It’s amazing how much the oil and gas has affected the state.

He estimated the state population would be less than half of what it is now, and it basically would have been a big military base. There’d be all that other stuff. There’d be fishing and timber and the rest of it, but it would be much diminished because of lack of infrastructure. Oil has paid for a lot of ports, and roads, and other items like that to support these other resource industries. It was an eye-opener.

Russel: I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but if you’re a permanent resident of Alaska, you get a check from the state.

Dave: That’s right.

Russel: That’s a royalty check because so much of the oil production is on state lands, not private lands. That money goes to the state. Then the state takes the surplus and distributes it to the citizens.

Russel:

That’s basically right. The North Slope primarily is state lands. Thank God for the guy that selected those lands after statehood. All that income goes to the state treasury, most of it does, into a permanent fund similar to what Norway has, and a portion of that permanent fund is thrown off every year.

The purpose of the permanent fund is to operate the state. And it does. It makes a lot of money. There’s, I forget, I think it’s $70 billion or something in it right now. A portion of it gets thrown off as dividends, and those dividends are distributed to people in the state of Alaska. It’s usually $1,000, $1,500, something like that.

Russel: It’s pretty interesting to think about that because that’s a windfall for a lot of people. That’s money that’s going directly into the economy for things that are not oil and gas.

Dave: You’re right, especially in rural areas where there’s not a lot of economic activity. It pays for a lot of snow machine gas, a lot of…

Russel: Snow machine gas? [laughs]

Dave:

Yeah. Thinking about the pipeline, Russell, I was just looking at something a minute ago, right now, the pipeline produces, the throughput is, say, 500,000 barrels a day. Texas is like five million barrels a day production. It’s Texas, and I think Alaska is third, fourth, fifth, something like that, in production. Texas is that way because of fracking.

Back in 1988, that was the peak year of throughput of the pipeline, it was like 2 million barrels a day versus the 500,000 barrels a day now. Two million barrels a day back in 1988 was 25 percent, roughly, of the US production.

Russel:

Again, we’re old enough to remember this, but people who weren’t alive in the ’70s don’t remember the gas crisis and the lines. You had to get your gas on even days or odd days, depending on your license plate number, and you had to wait in line for hours to get a tank of gas.

That’s back when cars had 427 cubic inch big block engines and such in them. Got about five miles to the gallon. We’ve come a long way in the last 50-plus years.

The Alaskan pipeline was a big deal. It was a big part of what we were doing to respond to the Arab oil embargo and other things. There was a lot of interest to get that online, and it still continues to make a difference. If they ever get on the North Slope and start fracking out there, we’ll see that production surge again.

Dave:

There’s two big projects up there that are coming online that will keep throughput around 400,000 and 500,000 for another decade or so. Conoco’s got a project up there, and Santos has a project coming online soon.

The pipeline future is a long life, long tail to it. It’s a big deal right now, Russell, because it’s a 50th anniversary. 2025, ’26, and ’27 are all this period of time, where the pipeline was being constructed 50 years ago, so there’s a lot of talk and activity about that up in Alaska. There also is talk about TAPS 100, which means another 50 years of Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Even if the throughput drops, say, in the future, some down to 200,000 barrels a day, you’d still operate the pipeline. You wouldn’t really want to shut. 200,000 barrels a day is a large field anywhere in the lower 48. You wouldn’t want to just say, “We’re done. We’ll just leave that going.”

There would be a lot of production for another 50 years, and the pipeline itself, as you know, there’s nothing to keep it from being effective and have a useful life, long to the future.

Russel: That’s one of the things. Pipeliners know this, but I don’t think the general public does, is that the things we do around cathodic protection and asset management, integrity management, all that, these systems can have an extremely long lifetime. It’s just a matter of managing them and maintaining them correctly.

Dave: Right. Just maintenance is a key thing. Change the light bulbs, Russell.

Russel: Yeah, exactly.

Dave: Get rid of your control panel that’s got flashing lights and put up a flat screen, and you’re good to go for another 50 years.

Russel:

Exactly. I wanted to ask you about one other thing that I read about frequently, and that’s the Alaskan gas line project. That project has been…it’s not getting…it’s not…What am I trying to say here? The Alaskan pipeline, the crude oil pipeline, the environment where that was permitted and constructed, it’s very different than where we are today.

Yet there seems to be a lot of interest in getting this Alaskan gas line project actually built in production. What’s your take on that? Do you think they’re actually going to get that done? Seems like they’re getting some agreements with LNG consumers in the Pacific, like Japan, and so forth. What’s your take on all that?

Dave:

As you know, you’re right about that. It’s been talked, the gas line, to getting gas off the North Slope, just like oil has come off the North Slope, has been talked about ever since oil started coming off the North Slope. There’s been fits and starts and stops of gas line projects for the last 20, 30 years.

Nowadays, this current project is being handled by Glenfarne, has a lot of legs to a lot of people. It seems like all the stars are aligning on this. They’ve got agreements with takers in Asia, and the federal government is on board big time with this, pushing it through some of their trade negotiations. If it’s going to go, it’s going to go soon.

The proponents of it, Glenfarne, Alaska, a combination of the name of their entity is called 8 Star, which is based on eight stars and the state flag of Alaska — but 8 Star, a portion of it owned by the state and 75 percent of it owned by Glenfarne, which is a developer who’s done a lot of LNG plants throughout the world.

They say they’re going to have FID in the first quarter, final investment decision, first quarter of next year. That would be a significant marker that this thing is going to go, so you should keep your eyes peeled, Russell.

Russel: I’m hopeful it does go. Anytime you have a large oil production facility, they need to be capturing that gas, taking it to market. I think the thing that’s fundamentally different than 15 or 20 years ago is just the maturity we’re seeing now in the worldwide LNG market and the demand. I’m hopeful it gets done. We shall see.

Dave: Yeah, sure will. It’ll be exciting if it happens. There’ll be a lot of activity in Alaska. People are really hoping it’s going to go.

Russel:

Two things we’re going to do. Here, one of the things we’re going to do is, our show notes, as we always do, we’ll link up the information so you can go out to the Alaska Oil and Gas Historical Society website.

If you’re interested, go and peruse the Pipeline Pioneer videos. There’s some really interesting, fun conversations there with folks that actually built the Alaskan oil economy.

Those guys are getting older. [laughs] We’re all getting older, so we’re capturing those stories before they’re gone, which is a good thing. Anything else you want to talk to the listeners about before we wrap up here?

Dave: Well, I don’t know. We could tell stories, Russell.

Russel: [laughs]

Russel: I don’t know that we want to bore people or embarrass ourselves, so probably not.

Dave: [laughs]

Dave:

No, it’s been a fun time, especially for me being started out working on this thing as soon as I got out of college. I thought I was going to be up in Alaska first for a construction season or two and ended up staying there forever, basically. It’s been quite a run.

This Oil and Gas Historical Society, it’s not focused primarily on the pipeline. It’s focused on North Slope, other places in Alaska. It’s not just the pipeline, but it’s been very exciting to be a part of that, trying to look up all these things and talk to these guys.

It’s rewarding for me, back here toward the end of my career, to look back and reflect on what’s happened in the last 50 years.

Russel:

It’s certainly been quite the journey. I appreciate you taking the time and telling us about all this. I love history. I love pipeline history. I’ve done a number of episodes on it, but this is a unique and different take, and particularly getting to hear from the guys that actually did it. That’s pretty cool.

All right, man. Look, thanks for your time. Great to talk to you. I don’t know why it took me so long to get you on the podcast.

Dave: I don’t know. It’s probably that one night we had in Houston, where I must have pissed you off or something.

Russel: I don’t know. I think I just didn’t want you to embarrass me. That’s probably it.

Dave:

OK.

[laughter]

Russel: All right, man. Hey, take care, man. Good to talk to you.

Dave: Thank you, Russell. Goodbye.

Russel:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, and our conversation with Dave. Just a reminder, before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and enter yourself in the drawing.

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Russel:

If you have questions or topics you’d be interested in, or if you’d even like to be a guest, please let me know on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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