Technical Features
The Trans-Arabian Pipeline was 1,214 kilometres (754 mi) long with diameter of 30 inches (760 mm). When constructed, it was the world's largest oil pipeline system. The initial capacity of the pipeline was 300,000 barrels per day (48,000 m3/d) (bpd), eventually rising to a maximum capacity of about 500,000 bbl/d (79,000 m3/d) with the addition of several more pumping stations. While the pipeline was considered groundbreaking and innovative at the time it was built, were it still operational to this day it would be considered somewhat outdated — nowadays, most modern long-distance pipelines constructed beginning in the second half of the twentieth century have been built to a diameter of 42" or 48" and thus able to transport considerably more crude oil per day than Tapline did in its heyday. The pipeline was supplied from the oil fields near Abqaiq.
The Tapline corridor has remained a potential export route for Persian Gulf oil exports to Europe and the United States. At least one analysis has indicated that the transportation cost of exporting oil via the Tapline through Haifa to Europe would cost as much as 40 percent less than shipping by tanker through the Suez Canal. In early 2005, rehabilitation of the Tapline at an estimated cost of US$100 to US$300 million was one of the strategic options being considered by the Jordanian government to meet oil needs.
Read more about this topic: Trans-Arabian Pipeline
Famous quotes containing the words technical and/or features:
“In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)