Subterranean Surge

So many underground pipelines tunnel beneath the sprawling U.S. petrochemical center near Houston that the area has come to be known as the "Spaghetti Bowl." In its own subterranean surge, Western Europe seems to be cooking up a sort of alphabet soup. Ten years abuilding, its 3,000-mile crude-oil-carrying network includes such giants as the 283-mile R.R.P. (for Rotterdam-Rhine Pipeline), the 485-mile S.E.P.L. (South European Pipeline), and the 562-mile C.E.L. (Central European Line). Engineers are now making final tests on the newest, richest ingredient of all: the $192 million T.A.L.

More formally known as the Trans-Alpine Line, T.A.L. is a triumph of agile engineering; its long pipe rises from sea level to 5,100 ft. in the Alps, pierces mountain rock in three 4 1/2-mile tunnels, and crosses 30 sizable rivers as it snakes for 288 miles from the Italian port of Trieste to refineries at Ingolstadt in West Germany. When its pumps begin pushing oil next month, the T.A.L. will be Europe's largest pipeline; eventually it will move one million barrels of crude a day.

Earlier Western European lines spread out from North Sea ports over relatively hospitable terrain, following the movement of refineries to fast-growing inland markets, which cannot be supplied by costly, inadequate rail transport. So strong is the demand for oil now that even the expense of crossing the Alps is no longer an economic obstacle. Though T.A.L. cost its owners, a consortium of 13 oil companies led by Esso and Shell, an average $500,000 a mile, its Trieste terminal, where the first tanker put in from Kuwait last week, is advantageously close to Mideast and North African oil sources.

Western Europe is now so thoroughly laced with buried pipe that T.A.L. may be the last of the big crude-oil pipeline projects. Even so, there is still plenty of need for new lines to carry gasoline and other refined products. It is initials that are in short supply. T.A.L. itself will soon spawn A.W.P., a 258-mile spur to Vienna. And some of T.A.L.'s oil will be shunted along from Ingolstadt to Karlsruhe via R.D.O. (Rhine-Danube Oil Line). Since that means reversing the flow through R.D.O., which was originally built to supply Ingolstadt, the line already has a new part-time name: "O.D.R."

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