Understanding the nature of risks associated with onshore natural gas gathering pipelines

Onshore gathering pipelines for transport of natural gas are a key part of the growing production industry in the United States. The safety of gathering pipelines has become an increasing public concern. However analysis of the data available in the database available from the federal agency responsible for regulation, leads to the conclusion that the risk of failure of gathering pipelines is equal to or possibly lower than that of transmission lines. Over the past two decades, incidents in natural gas onshore gathering pipelines have included no fatalities and 16 serious injuries. Unfortunately these statistics are based on the 10% of gathering pipelines that are currently federally regulated. A substantial increase in the failure rate (rate of significant incidents in the DOT database) of gathering pipelines is evident over the last two decades. It is shown that this does not correspond with a decline in pipeline safety. The variation in the rate of significant incidents can be largely explained by the increased natural gas prices over the corresponding time period. Onshore gathering pipelines are typically younger in construction age (43% are