Tim Bradner is the resources writer for The Alaska Journal of Commerce, a weekly business newspaper published in Anchorage. He also writes an economics column for The Anchorage Daily News.

With two exceptions, the petroleum industry’s record with safety in oil transportation has been good. Two significant spills were not on the pipeline but at either end: The 1989 Prince William Sound spill was caused by the grounding of the tanker Exxon Valdez, and a 2006 series of spills on the North Slope was because of corrosion in oil field pipelines operated by BP.

Our experience indicates that pipelines are generally safe but require regulation and continuing inspections.

On the 800-mile-long Trans Alaska Pipeline System itself, there was one incidence of a relatively small spill caused by corrosion, one significant spill when an above-ground section of pipeline was punctured by a bullet, one incidence in which a spill at a pump station was caused by a meter malfunction, causing a standby storage tank to overflow, and an incident in early 2010 where there was a small leak in a pump station. The latter two spills, the tank overflow and pump station piping leak, were kept in a containment system.

Alaskans feel the oil pipeline benefited from sharp controversy over its construction in the 1970s and a delay in its construction to allow time for development of environmental safeguards like remote valve closure and leak detection systems, and engineering solutions to permafrost and earthquake dangers.

Although the Alaskan experience has been generally positive, the significant spills (tanker spill in 1989 and oil field pipeline spill in 2006) resulted in major changes in federal and state regulatory oversight of pipeline and tanker operations. The 1989 spill resulted in Congressional passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that established new standards for tanker operations, including tanker escort systems and the first-ever provisions for independent citizen “watchdog” groups, such as the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council, to do independent audits and report findings to the pipeline operator and federal and state regulatory agencies. The trans-Alaska pipeline itself is regulated by a federal-state regulatory group, the Joint Pipeline Office, where federal and state regulators work in one office to coordinate pipeline oversight and inspections.

The Alaskan experience indicates that pipeline systems are generally safe but they require government regulation as to safe practices and continuing inspections. Regulatory agencies must have adequate authority and budgets, and industry must be given clear performance criteria in regulations.