The pipeline's owners want another 30 years, seven years before they have to ask

The owners of the trans-Alaska pipeline want another 30 years of federal right-of-way, and they are asking more than seven years before they have to.

The current authorization runs to January 2034. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company filed the renewal application this summer. Last time, it filed on May 2, 2001, against a grant that expired in January 2004, under three years out.

The 800-mile line has carried North Slope oil to the marine terminal at Valdez since 1977, averaging 463,000 barrels a day in 2025. Congress passed a dedicated act in 1973 to authorize it, and the original grant issued in January 1974.

The review will be lighter than last time. The Bureau of Land Management docketed this one as an environmental assessment. The 2004 renewal got a full environmental impact statement, prepared over 16 months, which weighed three options: renew for 30 years, renew for less, or decline to renew.

Alyeska filed on behalf of the system's three owners: Harvest Alaska, a Hilcorp affiliate, ConocoPhillips Transportation Alaska and ExxonMobil Pipeline Company.

BLM Alaska State Director Kevin Pendergast called the pipeline "an engineering marvel and only growing in its importance" to Alaska's economy and global energy markets.

A coalition of six groups petitioned the Interior Department in June 2024 for a new environmental analysis, arguing the original studies never accounted for emissions from refining and burning the oil the line carries, and that thawing permafrost is undermining the pipeline's structural integrity in ways requiring fresh evaluation. They also asked Interior to draft a plan for eventual dismantlement and land restoration. The signers included the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Environment, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Alyeska has said the pipeline is in excellent operational condition.

Comment runs through Sept. 10. This is the scoping phase, when BLM decides what the environmental review will examine, which makes it the public's main chance to shape what gets studied.