LONGEST PIPE LINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 256, 29 October 1934, Page 6

LONGEST PIPE LINE.

BRITISH ENGINEERING FEAT. (By E. B. M. DEWING.) • The bald statement in the Press that the Iraq oil pipe line has been completed gives little indication of the magnitude of the undertaking and the romantic nature of the engineering feat. The pipe runs from Kirkuk, Iraq, to Haifa, oil the shores of the Mediterranean in Palestine, where the oil will be shipped after refining to different parts of the world. It was hoped a year ago that it would be finished by January, 193.3, but the undisciplined Iraqi tribesmen, who had never before used pick and shovel, proved unexpectedly efficient workers, hence the early completion.

Kirkuk is situated in the area administered by the Iraqi Petroleum Company, which owns 40 oil wells which are connected with the terminal pumping station. A hundred yards away from the station the line disappears under the sand and only the telegraph poles, marching in a relentlessly straight line for G2O miles, and the pumping stations at intervals of 100 miles, indicate its presence. These stations, besides giving impetus to an annual flow of about 4,000,000 tons of oil, serve the additional purpose of making desert travel safer and more efficient.

The line from Kirkuk is duplicated for 150 miles into the desert as far as Haditha, where it divides, the larger proportion continuing to Haifa, the balance to Tripoli through Syria, making a total length of 1200 of piping. The cost of construction amounted to £10,000.000, ami special machinery had to be designed for the purpose. The piping was in lengths of 30 to 40 feet, each weighing locwt, and there were 100,000 of these lengths weighing 120,000 tons. Each pipe was welded together on the spot and specially treated against corrosion. For excavating the trenches there were special 'ditchers,' machines for lifting the pipes iirto position; contrivances for treating it with enamel and an ingenious machine for wrapping it with special paper which protects it against the action of salts.

One of the main problems to be solved was that of transportation. For this purpose, enormous lorries were designed, each capable of carrying 27 pipes, or 20 tons. To ensure continuity of delivery along the line, "trains" were organised consisting of a tractor, two or more 20-ton caterpillar trailers, and a sort of caravan coach. A train carried three crews, one diving while the other two rested or fed in the coach. In this way the train travel night and day, and thus indirectly the construction of the pipe line will revolutionise desert travel in the future. The construction took little more than two year*, and progress was at the amazing rate of over three-quarters of a mile a day. .

A word about Haifa, the terminal centre of the line, is. in place. Before the British occupied tho town it had only about 5000 inhabitants. Xow the population is in the vicinity of 55,000, and Haifa is a city of considerable strategic importance to British Mediterranean interests.