Pipeline engineering :

Pipeline Engineering is a discipline specializing at pipeline design, construction, operation, inspection, maintenance and integrity management, with the purpose of providing safe, reliable transportation of oil and natural gas while realizing high economic savings. Pipeline Engineering deals with not only energy transportation by pipeline operation, but also environmental conservation, climate change and national security

Design and operation :

Pipeline design includes a selection of the route traversed by the pipe, determination of the throughput (i.e., the amount of fluid or solids transported) and the operational velocity, calculation of pressure gradient, selection of pumps and other equipment, determination of pipe thickness and material (e.g., whether to use steel, concrete, cast iron, or PVC pipe), and an engineering economic analysis and a market analysis to determine the optimum system based on alternate designs. In each design, careful consideration must be given to safety, leak and damage prevention, government regulations, and environmental concerns.

Construction :

Construction of pipelines involves route survey, ditching or trenching, transporting the pipes, fittings, and other materials to the site, stringing the pipes along the ditch, bending steel pipes in the field to suit local topography, applying coating and wrapping to steel pipes, joining pipes together either before or after they are lowered into the trench (this depends on the type of pipes used), checking for possible welding flaws or leakage at the joints, and then covering trenches by soil and restoration of the land to its original appearance. For long pipelines, construction is done in segments so that one segment of the pipeline is completed before construction proceeds to the next. This minimizes the time that any given place is disturbed by construction activities. Even for large pipelines, construction for any segment is usually completed within six months and often in much less time. Small pipelines can be constructed in days.

When a pipeline must cross a river or creek, the pipe can be either attached a to a bridge, laid on the streambed underwater, or bored through the ground underneath the river. Modern boring machines allow convenient pipeline crossing of rivers and roads.