Alex Clark

11/11/2015
Spencer Bartholomew
Calculus 1
Mr. CEO
The cost analysis of the laying of the pipeline has been completed. There are a
few problems, as you are well aware with laying this pipeline. Ultimately there are 5
options for this pipeline. There is a clear winner as far as cost efficiency goes, but all 5
options will be discussed in this report.
Option number one as marked by the Purple i on the drawing is the second most
expensive option on the list. Option one is strictly on BLM property, but has to travel the
furthest of any pipeline route. The pipe would travel 60 Miles and cost a total of
30,000,000$.
Option number two as marked with the green ii, is a rather complicated route.
This route avoids private property but has to dig through a mountain side. After the
costs of the complications of digging through the mountain, and traveling 50 miles, the
total cost will be 27,800,000$. Though complicated this option is the cheapest.
Option number three as marked by the red is the shortest possible route. The
pipeline would only span 38.08 mi, but is strictly on private property. Though this route is
the shortest distance it is the most expensive at 32,368,000$.
Option number 4 as marked by the grey i, runs straight south from the well until it
is off private property, then runs east. This has the shortest distance on private property
but was still expensive, adding up to 30,250,000$

Option number five as marked by the C, it the optimal route having a mix of
private land and BLM land. C was calculated using Optimization, as learned in calculus.
using the pythagorean theorem, the south east direction of the pipe was figured to be
the square root of (225 + x^2), and the eastern distance is (35 - x). The function C(x)=
850,000*sqrt(225+x^2)+500,000(35-x) was derived to compare the optimal length of x to
produce the lowest cost. To find the minimum point of the function you take the
derivative of C(x) and set it equal to zero. This will give the the lowest possible value for
x. After following those steps x comes out to be 8.82, if you plug that back into the
length of the south east pipeline and the east pipeline, you find that you travel 17.40
miles on private property, and 26.18 miles on BLM land. this leaves you with the total
cost of 27,882,970.30$. This option is more expensive than 2 by a small margin
compared to the others, but might be more useful considering that it is all flat land, thus
reducing the risk of accidents, and injuries.

Reflection.
Calculus, as shown by this example, has proven to be a very useful tool to
companies and people everywhere. I plan on becoming a civil engineer, and even this
project is something useful to the field I wish to pursue. Calculus would even be helpful
if you wanted to find the optimal length of pipeline to reduce the amount of materials

used. Calculus will be extremely important as I learn physics and engineering, Many of
the things that I will be learning from here on out will be using calculus.