Alaska Pipeline Doomsayings Revisited Construction on the
pipeline began in 1975, and oil first moved through it on June
20, 1977. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton summed up
its success in 2003 that Today the pipeline produces 17 percent
of our domestic petroleum. It has pumped nearly 14 billion
barrels of oil and $400 billion into our economy. We need the
pipeline even more now than when it was built. Just in time for
the PBS special, The Alaska Pipeline, set to air April 24 on
PBS, theBusiness & Media Institute compared predictions from the
pipelines inception to the realities of the past three decades.
Propaganda, Not Policy: Approval of the pipeline was not based
on facts but on oil industry propaganda, according to some of
the Department of Interiors top ecologists, reported The
Washington Post on Feb. 11, 1971. The New York Times ran an
editorial that began, passage of the Alaska pipeline bill is the
triumph of scare propaganda and economic pressure over reasoned
public policy on Nov. 14, 19