Former Alaska senator Mike Gravel, who speeded construction of Trans Alaska oil pipeline, dead at 91

Mike Gravel, former Alaska U.S. Senator who served in the late 1960s and 1970s — important years in Alaska and the nation — died Saturday June 26 at is hoe in xxx, Calif. He was 91.

Gravel is best known in Alaska for his legislation in the Senate that speeded approvals of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, which at the time was bogged down in lawsuits filed by national conservation groups.

Without Gravel’s legislation, which won narrow approval in the Senate after a tie-breaking vote by then vice-president Spiro Agnew, the oil pipeline would likely have been substantially delayed.

The action cleared the way for construction to start in 1974 and for the pipeline to be completed in 1977, one year before the revolution in Iran brought another cutoff in oil supply from the Middle East to the West.

Had the pipeline not been started in 1974 many Alaska businesses that had invested heavily in anticipation of work on the giant project would have been hurt badly and many would have gone bankrupt. Labor unions had also invested in training and recruiting of Alaskans for pipeline jobs, and those opportunities for Alaskans to work would have been lost if TAPS had been delayed further.

But the pipeline was completed in 1977, putting almost two million barrels of new oil supply into domestic oil markets by 1978. It was just in time, too.

The revolution in Iran that year led to another cutoff of oil supply from the Persian Gulf, but because the Alaska pipeline was operating and putting oil into U.S. markets there was no long-lasting runup in oil prices, unlike the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which caused panic in U.S. and other oil markets, and soaring prices, because the Alaskans oil was not yet available.

In the Senate Gravel was also known for his fierce criticism of the Vietnam war and his opposition to nuclear weapons because of the danger of proliferation.

He also warned of the dangers of nuclear fission reactors because problems with radioactive waste disposal, and strongly opposed the testing of U.S nuclear weapons in Alaska.

At the time the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was planning underground nuclear tests at Amchitka, in the Aleutians. The tests went ahead despite the senator’s concerns. However, Gravel also advocated for research on nuclear fusion, a safer form of nuclear energy that produces no waste.

Gravel came to national prominence in 1971 when he read the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record so that the complete set of the papers would be made public. The New York Times and Washington Post also obtained the papers and wrote articles and published excerpts, but Gravel made the complete set of papers available, which were subsequently published in book form by Beacon Press.

His action resulted in a legal precedent, in a U.S. Supreme Court decision, that government agencies cannot block access to important information by the public under the cloak of confidentiality.

Gravel served in Alaska’s Legislature, where he was Speaker of the House, and led an effort to improve rural education through a state general obligation bond issue to build the first state-operated regional boarding schools in rural communities.

At the time most Alaska Native children had few opportunities to attend school at grades higher than elementary education in village schools operated the US. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Gravel’s legislation on rural schools established a recognition that rural education was a state responsibility. Education for all Alaskans, not just children in urban communities, is guaranteed in Alaska’s Constitution.

Gravel’s record has been distorted to some degree by hostile media. On example is the notion that the senator supported an idea for a “dome city” near Mt. McKinley (now Denali) National Park. What the senator actually suggested was a large tent structure built over a small area of winter terrain that Gravel had seen demonstrated in Europe at a Winter Olympics.

It would have allowed limited recreation in an area protected from extreme winter temperatures, giving an early boost to winter tourism.

However, an Anchorage newspaper reporter was critical of the idea and a misleading headline dubbed it a “dome city.” This was inaccurate, but it stuck.