Trans-Alaska Pipeline System too risky. A pipeline was thus the only viable system for transporting the oil to the nearest port free of pack-ice, almost 800 miles (1,300 km) away at Valdez. In February 1969, before the SS Manhattan had even sailed from its East Coast starting point, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), an unincorporated joint group created by ARCO, British Petroleum, and Humble Oil in October 1968, asked for permission from the United States Department of the Interior to begin geological and engineering studies of a proposed oil pipeline route from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, across Alaska. Even before the first feasibility
Northern Lights (pipeline) by the Vukhtyl gas field, but later the pipeline was extended in order to connect with the Urengoy gas field. The Northern Lights pipeline system has a total length of , of which around is used to transport Russian gas to Europe. The pipeline runs from the Urengoy gas field through Vuktyl, Ukhta, Gryazovets, Torzhok and Smolensk to Minsk in Belarus and from there to Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. A part of the newer Yamal–Europe pipeline runs parallel to the Northern Lights pipeline. A branch line from Gryazovets through Saint Petersburg to Vyborg supplies the Saint Petersburg area and Finland.