In the 1970s, the United States built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) to provide greater access to large reserves of domestic oil in Alaska. Built at a cost of $8 billion (equal to over $39 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars), TAPS moves oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez, a southern port in Alaska.(i) Thirty-three years after start-up in 1977, the pipeline, originally designed to move 2.1 million barrels per day, has a current flow of only 0.68 million barrels per day[ii], less than a third of its capacity due to the production decline at oil fields in Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope areas. There are far more domestic oil resources that could flow through the pipeline, but the federal government continues to deny Americans access to these energy resources.
