Nancy Holt visited Alaska in March 1986 at the invitation of Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage, who hoped she might create a work of art celebrating the region's beauty. Holt was struck by the Trans-Alaska pipeline, and instead created two works examining the pipeline and its impact. 10 Billion Barrels of Crude Oil depicts  the facts and figures of the pipeline’s operation along the oil’s route. To read them, one must shift positions, a physical disturbance that accentuates the discomfort of the information itself.

This work speaks to Holt's earlier concrete poems concerned with mapping, such as Hometown, while also relating to System Works such as Sole Source and Electrical System, which were a primary focus for Holt in the 1980s. In July 1986, Holt returned to Alaska to create the System Work Pipeline at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage.