Making the world go round: the past, present and future of oil and gas pipelines

Posted: October 17, 2025

In September 2022, a series of underwater explosions took place in the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2, a huge gas pipeline intended to connect Germany with Russia, had been sabotaged. Gas bubbles containing an enormous amount of methane rose up to the surface of the water. Images appeared in newspapers worldwide, with readers and commentators shocked at the momentous nature of the event.

This shock had to do, in part, with how crucial oil and gas pipelines are to the operation of global industry. If pipelines are vulnerable, then so is the system. Currently, such pipelines are deployed both onshore and offshore around the world; by some estimates, over a million kilometers’ worth of pipeline is now in use. But how did the pipeline become a predominant means of transporting oil and gas? And what opportunities or challenges does the pipeline currently face?

Early days for the pipeline, from ancient China to Pennsylvania

In the ancient world, piping was used in places like Persia and Rome to transport water for drinking and irrigation—purposes they have served continuously, alongside the removal of sewage, in the millennia since. The known prehistory of oil and gas pipelines in particular begins in China with the use of gas pipelines sometime in the years B.C., although accounts vary about exactly when and to what ends they were used.

With the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, pipelines began to show their usefulness for the distribution of manufactured gas and later natural gas. Manufactured gas, a fuel source typically made from coal and/or oil, was piped around Europe and the United States before the ascendancy of natural gas in the late 20th century. The first major demonstrations were made around 1800 by Scottish engineer William Murdoch, whose groundbreaking gas-powered lighting system involved networks of iron and copper pipes. In the 1810s, a bankrupt Baltimore painter named Rembrandt Peale—who had successfully installed gaslights in his museum—spearheaded the laying of wooden pipes to distribute manufactured gas around town.

Over the course of the 19th century, wood was replaced by metal in most pipelines, with iron and eventually steel pipes making it possible to transport natural gas and oil reliably over progressively longer distances. Pipelines became particularly attractive for oil, which had earlier been moved using wooden barrels on carts drawn by horses or donkeys. To reduce costs, pipelines made of wood—then later iron or steel—were used to bring crude oil to railway stations for further transport.

The first oil pipeline, believed to have been produced in 1862 in Pennsylvania, was made from two wooden boards combined into a “V” shape and ran for about 300 meters. Three years later, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, a man named Samuel Van Syckel laid the nation’s first commercially successful oil pipeline. Made from wrought iron with securely welded joints, and powered by steam pumps as well as gravity, this pipeline of roughly eight kilometers promised a radical drop in the cost of transporting oil—much to the chagrin of local teamsters.

The 20th-century rise and global expansion of oil and gas pipelines

Early pipelines were constructed using threaded pipe screwed together with tongs; this approach proved difficult for larger pipes, often causing leaks. The adoption of welding techniques beginning in the early 20th century—coupled with advances in high-strength steel—enabled the construction of high-pressure leak-proof pipelines with large diameters that could cover much longer distances. By 1918, a crude oil pipeline had been built reaching all the way from Oklahoma to Chicago. Soon afterward, refined product was also being piped across the United States.

The Second World War brought about two major pipeline milestones. In 1942, Nazi submarines had started targeting the tankers that brought Texan oil to refineries in the American northeast, but attempts to replace those tankers with rail and barge transport were failing. In response, the U.S. designed and constructed a large-diameter emergency pipeline named “Big Inch” along with a supplementary line named “Little Big Inch.” Together, they covered some 2,150 kilometers of land, making them the world’s largest pipelines; they would deliver over 500,000 barrels of oil per day to northeastern refineries until the end of the war.

Across the Atlantic, another milestone was achieved by Operation PLUTO, a British initiative to lay a pipeline under the English Channel that would supply oil to Allied forces in northern Europe in the wake of the D-Day landings. With tankers vulnerable to Nazi submarines there, too, a secret plan was enacted despite the many logistical difficulties of this rather unprecedented feat of engineering. Eventually, one ship laid high-pressure pipe of low diameter, which was then successfully connected to pipeline networks on either side of the Channel.

In the decades following the war, long-distance pipeline construction accelerated as technology improved and demand for oil—and later natural gas—increased. Major oil and gas pipelines were also constructed outside of the United States, including the Trans-Arabian Pipeline that linked the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.

The discovery of oil and gas in remote areas with low demand has also driven the adoption of long-distance pipeline technology. Offshore facilities in locations like the North Sea have proven well-suited to pipeline transportation. Even in locations where tankers are used for long-distance ocean transport, pipelines still play a crucial role in bringing oil and gas to tanker-loading ports and distributing cargo on the other end.

Pipelines are vital to energy distribution in today’s globalized economy

Pipelines are now a major component in the transportation networks that bring petrochemicals to consumers worldwide. According to the Global Energy Monitor, there are some 3,544 operational oil and gas pipelines in 131 different countries, with a combined length of 1.33 million kilometers. The largest combined network was in the United States, home to over 30% of the total pipeline length, trailed by the likes of Russia, Canada, China and Australia. Practically all overland transportation of natural gas is achieved through pipelines, some of which are made from steel and some of which (mostly short-distance pipes) use flexible plastic.

Today, the oil and gas pipeline system must contend with geopolitical instability—as seen most dramatically in the end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine earlier this year—as well as the possibility of sabotage. Pipeline operators also have to contend with environmental and social concerns, not least in terms of the possible impact on climate change, local ecologies and Indigenous land rights. The design and operation of pipelines must take into account the need to comply with environmental and safety regulations on an ongoing basis.

A wide array of digital tools and solutions now offer pipeline operators enhanced capacities to analyze data, detect leaks, improve safety and maximize operational efficiency while fulfilling regulatory requirements. Many pipeline networks are controlled by remote computers involving satellite communication. “Smart pigs”—pipeline inspection devices equipped with a power supply, a data storage device and sensors—are used to clean and assess pipelines from the inside, with an emphasis on informed preventive maintenance.

One possible change on the horizon for natural gas pipelines in particular lies in being used for hydrogen. European efforts to transition to a net-zero economy may well involve either blending hydrogen into existing natural gas pipelines or repurposing gas infrastructure entirely for hydrogen transport. In Hamburg, an initiative is already underway to convert 40 kilometers of natural gas pipelines for moving hydrogen to industrial users. Significant modifications are likely to be required in many cases, however, given hydrogen’s unique properties, such as its tendency to cause embrittlement in steel.

These techniques may have come a long way since Rembrandt Peale’s experiments in a Baltimore backyard—but there are sure to be even more advancements in the pipeline.