Oil Spill and Unified Command Final Report
The spill was first discovered at 5:45 AM, March 2, 2006 by a BP operator who was driving on a road along the pipeline and noticed the smell. It took three days for workers to discover the source of the oil. According to the Unified Command (consisting of several groups including BP, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) Final Report, "The source was a quarter inch hole at the 6 o'clock position in an above ground 34-inch diameter crude oil transit pipeline. The hole was discovered in the pipe within a buried culvert (caribou crossing)." The transit line ran between Gathering Center 2 and Gathering Center 1. The spill went undetected for as long as five days, according to a New York Times report of a BP press conference on the spill in mid-March 2006.
Subsequent investigation found a six inch layer of sediment in the bottom of the pipe section. Investigators said that the sludge helped breed acidic bacteria and corrosion that ultimately ate though the pipe. BP executives said they were surprised that corrosion developed in the large trunk lines because they didn't carry much water mixed with the oil. But they were aware that sediment was collecting and that leak technology wouldn't work if the lines were not periodically cleaned. Federal and state authorities concluded that BP did not spend the money necessary to maintain the Prudhoe pipes. Reports of the spill's volume varied widely at the time of the spill. On March 25, 2008, the Unified Command for spill response announced that the volume of crude oil spilled was 212,252 US gallons (5,053.6 bbl), making it more than three times larger than any spill ever reported on the North Slope.
Clean-up work was completed on May 2, 2006 and the site was backfilled and covered with a 4 to 6 inch layer of chunks of live, frozen tundra that were taken from a donor site and transplanted to the spill site Government environmental officials said it could take up to a decade for the tundra vegetation to return to normal.
BP decommissioned the entire 34-inch transit line and replaced it with a 20-inch line, containing pig launch and recovery sites.
Read more about this topic: Prudhoe Bay Oil Spill
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