10 Transportation Pipeline and Buried Piping Available to Purchase

In the modern society, products are seldom consumed in the same location where they are produced. This is true for most items, from basic farm products to very sophisticated high-technology industrial products. These products are often transported thousands of miles to reach their consumers. The difference lies in terms of the most suitable means of transporting these products into the market. For liquid and gaseous products, pipelines have proven to be the safest and most economical means of transportation onshore, and one of the most reliable methods for transporting these products across the water.

Figure 10.1 exemplifies the needs of transportation pipelines for crude oil and its refined products. The crude produced from the oil field has to be transported to the user, either a refinery or a shipping terminal, located hundreds of miles away. Because an oil refinery is generally located away from a populated area that will be consuming the refined products, the refined products will then need to be transported from the oil refinery to the consuming market. This is the situation with oil and natural gas. The main characteristic of the transportation pipeline is that it involves a large quantity of pipe, which often requires multiple suppliers for a single project. A transportation pipeline also generally runs many miles without any attachment of special components, such as elbows, tees, and other stress risers.