Safe, efficient, and low cost. Imagine where we'd be today without it.The 48-inch trans-Alaska oil pipeline is truly the man-made wonder of the Last Frontier, traversing 800 miles (or 1300 km) of frozen tundra, boreal forest, 800 rivers and streams, three major earthquake faults and three rugged mountain ranges. The corridor includes more than 550 wildlife crossings for moose, caribou and other wildlife. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company completed the pipeline in 1977 at a cost of $8 billion for the two-year project, the largest privately funded construction effort at that time. The Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was built as a means of transporting crude oil from the oilfields at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope to the marine and northern most ice-free port in Valdez, where it is loaded aboard tankers for the journey to U.S. refineries. During the peak of construction, over 28,000 people were employed by Alyeska and its contractors. TAPS carries approximately 15 percent of the nation's domestic oil production.