The first of several of the planned trans Alaska pipelines i snot completed and two million barrels of hot oil (160 degrees F) pour through it daily. Outside the temp. is minus 70 degrees. If the oil itself were 32 degrees, to avoid threat to perma frosts and ecosystem, 100,000 more horsepower would be needed at the pumps. But the oil is hot, and those horses are not in the system or anywhere near. An earthquake strikes, rougher than the one that in 1964 almost destroyed Valdez, at the pipeline's tanker terminus in the stormy, tidal-wave-prone Gulf of Alaska.
