|
The Big Inch and its companion project, the Little Big Inch, collectively known as the Inch pipelines, are petroleum pipelines extending from Texas to New Jersey in the United States, constructed as emergency war measures between 1942 and 1944. Before World War II, petroleum products were transported from the oil fields of Texas to the north-eastern states by oil tanker. When the United States entered the war, this vital link was attacked by German U-boat submarines, threatening both the oil supplies to the north-east and its onward transshipment to Great Britain. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, championed the pipeline project as a way of transporting petroleum by the more secure, interior route. The pipelines were government financed and owned, but were built and operated by the War Emergency Pipelines company, a non-profit corporation backed by a consortium of the largest American oil companies. It was the longest, biggest and heaviest project of its type then undertaken; the Big and Little Big Inch pipelines were 1,254 miles and 1,475 miles long (2,018 km and 2,374 km) respectively, with 35 pumping stations along their routes. The project required 16,000 people and of materials. It was praised as an example of private-public sector cooperation and featured extensively in US government propaganda. After the end of the war there were extended arguments over how the pipelines should be used. In 1947, the Texas East Transmission Corporation purchased the pipelines for $143,127,000, the largest post-war disposal of war-surplus property. The corporation converted them to transport natural gas, transforming the energy market in the north-east. The Little Big Inch was returned to carry oil in 1957. The pipelines are owned by Spectra Energy Partners and Enterprise Products and remain in use. ==Background== By the time that the United States entered World War II in 1941, oil was a vital part of military operations around the world. The United States produced 60 percent of the world's crude oil, with the state of Texas in the south-west leading this production, producing more than twice as much crude as any other state.〔; 〕 The industry comprised a handful of very large producers and more than 3,500 smaller operators. The north-east coast of the United States depended on these supplies of oil, importing both crude and refined products. Across most of Texas, there had been little interest in building pipelines to transport oil, and petroleum was typically moved from the south-west to the north-east coast using a mixture of sea freight and railroad transport.〔; 〕 In early 1941, 70,000 barrels of oil were moved on the railroads each day, but this method was expensive, and the bulk of the oil was moved using barges, some with a capacity of up to 15,000 barrels, operating up and down the rivers and the Atlantic Coast. With the outbreak of war, the eastern sea routes of the country were attacked by German U-boat submarines.〔 United States naval defence was very limited and largely obsolete; between January and April 1942, among other naval losses, 46 oil tankers were sunk and 16 damaged. The problem was made worse as 50 tankers had been sent to help the UK earlier in 1941. Insurers began to refuse to underwrite the remaining vessels and the volume of crude oil reaching the north-east from the Texas Gulf dropped. In response, steps were taken to better protect the tankers from attack, but losses continued to mount until, in April 1942, they were banned by the Navy from operating the north-east sea routes.〔 The government and industry took steps to maximise the use of the railroads, increasing the amount of oil carried on them more than ten-fold, but there were shortages of rail tank cars, and the existing fleet of cars was in poor condition.〔 Instead, the United States government began to examine options for the use of pipelines to fulfil the demand for petroleum in the north-east.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Big Inch」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|