BY CLIFFORD F. LYNCH
fastlane
pipelines: the oil industry’s “safe mode”
FEW WOULD DENY THAT THE OIL SPILL IN THE
Gulf of Mexico was an accident of almost epic proportions—one that cost human lives and whose toll
on the environment, wildlife, businesses, and individual livelihoods mounts by the day. So it’s no surprise that the oil industry’s operations have come
under increased scrutiny of late. But it turns out that
not all oil industry practices carry the same kinds of
risks as deepwater drilling. For example, when it
comes to transporting its product, the oil industry,
for the most part, uses one of the safest modes available: the pipeline.
The first crude oil pipeline was laid in Pennsylvania
in 1865. The line was modest—only two inches in
diameter and four miles in length—and ran directly
from the wellhead to a railroad loading station. This
represented a significant advance over the previous
practice of transporting oil in wooden kegs loaded on
horse-drawn wagons. The success of this new line led
to others, and by 1920, U.S. pipeline mileage had
tripled. Growth continued at a moderate pace until
the early stages of World War II, when 48 U.S. oil
tankers were sunk by German submarines. The
tankers’ vulnerability quickly led to an expansion of
land-based lines moving oil from Texas and
Oklahoma to the Eastern Seaboard, and by 1946,
there were 140,000 miles of pipeline in the United
States, all controlled by oil companies.
Today, there are approximately 200,000 miles of oil
pipelines throughout the country, and this $31 billion system moves about two-thirds of the oil transported in the United States. Water carriers move
about 28 percent, with motor and rail carriers sharing the remaining 6 percent. To fully appreciate the
volume of oil handled through the pipeline system,
consider the following: A modest-sized pipeline will
transport about 150,000 barrels daily. To move this
volume by road would require 750 tanker trucks
daily, delivering a load every two minutes around the
clock. Moving it by rail would require a 75-car train,
with each tank car carrying 2,000 barrels, arriving
and unloading every day.
One of the most important pieces of equipment in
the pipeline universe is the pipeline inspection gauge,
or pig. During the process of pigging, this tool, the
diameter of which matches the diameter of the line,
is propelled by the pressure of the product in the
pipeline. It is used for several different operations,
including the physical separation of different types of
liquids, recording geometric information, inspection
of walls, and cleaning.
Clifford F. Lynch is principal of C.F. Lynch & Associates, a provider of logistics management advisory services, and author of Logistics Outsourcing – A Management Guide and co-author of The
Role of Transportation in the Supply Chain. He can be reached at cliff@cflynch.com.
