Whistleblowers Confirm EIJ Trans-Alaska Pipeline Warning

Earth Island Journal scoops the mainstream media

UK - On July 12, six senior Trans-Alaska Pipeline (Alyeska) employees warned that a rupture of the 800-mile-long pipeline could occur at any time. "It's not a matter of if it is going to happen, it's when it is going to happen," one of the employees told the London Guardian.

The Alyeska employees, who spoke to the Guardian anonymously, provided evidence of "compliance failures and other serious charges." The revelations corroborate a Summer 1998 Earth Island Journal exposé ["Pipeline in Peril" by Richard A. Fineberg] that documented equipment failures, safety cutbacks and a list of spills and near-disasters. Both the Journal and the Guardian concluded that an inland oil spill would be more environmentally devastating that the Exxon Valdez oil-tanker calamity.

In an unsigned letter to BP Amoco's CEO Sir John Browne, the whistleblowers complained of a "culture of harassment, intimidation, retaliation and discrimination" than allowed executive management to discourage middle managers from filing critical audit and safety reports. The letter charged that managers had been instructed "to disregard and/or circumvent" compliance manuals and to "tone down, alter or delete negative reports, including internal audits and surveillance reports." The whistleblowers charged that all maintenance and inspection records prior to 1996 have been lost and records were falsified to cover up the problem. One whistleblower told the Guardian that the situation "is more dangerous now than it ever was because Alyeska is being run by spin doctors."

The letter (which was forwarded to three members of the US Congress) called for an "immediate intervention" by BP Amoco officials. The letter also requested that "credible and qualified auditors" be dispatched to Alaska to verify the whistleblowers' complaints.

Senior Alyeska inspectors last warned that the aging pipeline was at risk in 1993. Congressional investigators ordered BP Amoco, Exxon, Arco and other pipeline participants to address several "imminent threats" to pipeline safety. "Six years later," the Guardian reports, "the whistleblowers say these safety issues have been 'consistently disregarded'."

The London Guardian noted that the letter "could be used by political and environmental lobbyists to frustrate the merger" between BP Amoco and US oil giant Arco.

The $26 billion merger would give BP Amoco nearly monopolistic control over 74 percent of the oil fields and 72 percent of the pipeline. Oddly, has been almost no coverage of this story in the US press.

UN CONFIRMS JOURNAL'S JETS-AND-CLIMATE STORY

UK - On June 4, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a study on "Aviation and the Global Atmosphere" that confirms Earth Island Journal's warning [Summer '97] that emissions from the world's 16,000 aircraft are "polluting the skies and changing the weather."

The IPCC reports that planes account for 3.5 percent of global warming and could contribute 15 percent of planet-heating gases by 2050. If the growth of air travel is not halted immediately, jet emissions could cause irreversible damage to climate stability.

The IPCC report calls on world governments to discourage air travel in favor of travel by train.

The IPCC report repeats environmentalists' demands that air travel and aviation fuel must be taxed. Because of resistance on the part of the US government and its Big Oil backers, aviation fuel remains untaxed. Aviation fuel contains four times more lead than auto gasoline contained before lead was banned in 1973. A lead-free ethanol-based aviation fuel called AGE-85 is now available. It is cheaper than conventional oil-based fuel.

What You Can Do: Ask your favorite airline if it has started using lead-free AGE-85 fuel. Let airline officials know that you won't be flying again until they make the transition.