May 31, 1977: Two years and two months after it was begun (on March 27, 1975), the 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline is completed at a cost of $8 billion in 1977 dollars, or $28 billion in 2009 dollars. The original cost projection of the pipeline, in 1974, by Alyeska, the eight-company consortium that built it, was $6 billion.
The pipeline is intended to exploit the Alaskan North Slope and, subsequently, is marketed as a means of reducing American dependence on foreign oil.

The pipeline does no such thing, however, as it merely slows, but does not reverse, the decline of American domestic oil production.

Production peaks in October 1970, when the United States pumps 310 million barrels of domestic oil.

By the time oil begins to flow from the Alaska pipeline, production is down to 250 million barrels per month. Carrying costs alone through the pipeline on June 1, 1977, are put at $6.04 a barrel ($21.25 in 2009 dollars), far higher than the $5.50 the federal government had expected. The actual cost of oil is about twice the carrying cost once it is sold.

U.S. domestic oil production rises again, thanks to Alaskan oil, to a high of 283 million in May 1985, but overall decline resumes steeply even as American oil demand rises. In February 2009, U.S. oil production was at 145 million barrels for the month. By then the Alaska pipeline had carried 15 billion barrels of oil.

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