ANCHORAGE, ALASKA - Hanging on a white marker board in Kurt Gibson’s office is a faded Polaroid of himself and his sister when they were children. They are standing inside a length of 48-inch pipe in the port town of Valdez, the picture snapped on a family road trip in May, 1970. Seven years later, the first oil would move through that pipe in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) from Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez and from there by tanker to energy-thirsty Americans in the lower 48 United States.

Above the picture, in green marker and lowercase letters, Mr. Gibson, now 43, has written a short question: “Why do we do this?” An arrow connects his question to the picture.

“Why am I working 12-hour days, seven days a week? Why do I miss my summer and lose out on fishing?” asks Mr. Gibson, deputy director of the oil-and-gas division within Alaska’s department of natural resources. He rattles off these questions, expanding on the significance of the picture: “Because I want some other kid to stand inside a 48-inch hunk of pipeline just like I did.”

Strange motivation, perhaps, even for someone involved in the seemingly endless negotiations over a proposed pipeline that this time would bring natural gas from the North Slope to the rest of the United States. But in this northernmost state, young children standing in rust-coloured steel tubes would mean a pipeline is in the works again. With Alaskan oil production on the decline, natural gas would keep the state’s coffers flush. Jobs and cheaper fuel for Alaskans would be part of the package.

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