Norman Wells Pipeline: A Northern triumph

Interprovincial Pipe Line’s (now Enbridge’s) Norman Wells Pipeline, a.k.a. Line 21, was the first underground oil pipeline built above Canada’s Arctic Circle, and became the critical transportation link for one of Canada’s oldest oil fields upon completion in 1985. It was North America’s first pipeline built through discontinuous permafrost, requiring a specialized ditching machine, heavier-walled pipe steel and exclusively winter construction due to muskeg. Nearly $70 million (20%) of the construction budget was spent in the North, and more than 50% of the workforce living along the right-of-way was employed in some way by the pipeline’s creation.