The natural gas industry uses natural gas pipelines to transport natural gas around the country. In the US alone there is a highly integrated transmission and distribution grid that can transport natural gas to and from nearly any location in the lower 48 states.

For natural gas to be able to be transported to almost any location in the lower 48 states there are 305,000 miles of interstate and intrastate pipelines that are needed. There are over 210 different natural gas pipeline systems that make up these 305,000 miles. 400 underground natural gas storage facilities store the natural gas, while there are more than 11,00 delivery points, 5,000 receipt points, 1,400 interconnection points, and 24 hubs or market centers that provide a way to get the natural gas to the consumers.

Pipelines are the best way to transport natural gas in this day and age, but there are several problems that these pipelines and pipeline companies can cause. To start with, under a federal law known as the natural gas act, companies have the right to exercise eminent domain so it can condemn private property for constructing and maintaining the pipeline. If the company chooses your private land as some of the land it wants to use all you can do is live with it or move away.

This doesn’t sound like a big problem to most people, but serious problems with the pipelines are that there is a constant risk of accidents, spills, and explosions. In the past few years, there have been many large pipeline failures that led to massive damage and even loss of live.

In September 2010, a natural gas pipeline explosion of San Bruno, California killed eight people. Once the National Transportation Safety Board had time to investigate the case they found “troubling revelations… about a company that exploited weakness in a lax system of oversight and government agencies that placed a blind trust in operators to the detriment of public safety.”

Luckily companies like Baker Hughes have created the GEOPIG high-resolution caliper in-line inspection service. These PIGs are intelligent robotic devices that are propelled down the pipelines to evaluate the interior of the pipeline. These PIGs can test pipe thickness, pipe roundness, check for signs of corrosion, detect minute leaks, and any other defects along the interior of the pipeline.

Although it is great that companies like Baker Hughes have created these PIGS that are making pipelines much safer, they have not solved all of the problems for the natural gas pipelines. It will be interesting to see how increase use of natural gas will affect these pipelines and the safety hazards that go along with them.

Natural Gas Pipelines by Region:

Natural Gas by Region