The Anchorage Daily News is featuring an AP story describing how Alyeska engineers anticipated the effects of a bruising quake when building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

No company would build on a huge, active earthquake fault if it didn’t have to.

‘We didn’t have a choice,’ said Steve Sorensen, engineering coordinator for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.

Short of running the trans-Alaska oil pipeline through Canada, Alyeska had to cross the Denali Fault, which spans almost the entire width of Alaska, to get North Slope crude oil to tidewater.

I’ve been fascinated by the Alaska Pipeline since its construction, not to mention reading an Alistair MacLain novel (Athabasca) in my impressionable youth. The linked article describes the feats of engineering necessary to build an oil pipeline across an active fault line.