About one-third of the Alaska gas pipeline project cost has little to do with physically burying steel pipe along hundreds of miles of the northern continent. Instead, this major piece of the overall project would center on a 155-acre patch at the Prudhoe Bay oil field that would house a massive complex of structures known as the gas treatment plant. The plant's cost has been estimated at $12 billion, compared with a total project cost of $32 billion to $41 billion. It would be the most expensive complex of buildings ever assembled in Alaska.