Fast times and fat wallets – how Alaska got its pipeline

The trans-Alaska pipeline was the largest privately-funded construction project in the world, built across the biggest U.S. state and faced with unprecedented natural obstacles. It came with an $8 billion price tag, but true costs and benefits of the pipeline are still being calculated.
In the spring of 1974, an airplane dropped Dave Haugen at a camp five miles north of the Yukon River, smack dab in the middle of Alaska. His job was to oversee construction of the road that would run along the tr