Monitor safety of aged fuel pipelines

Ensuring the integrity and safety of old pipelines that transport oil and natural gas calls for frequent inspections, together with modern, sensitive leak-detection tools and regular removal of accumulated deposits.

The failure of old pipelines is becoming increasingly common, and can be dangerously disruptive to communities and the environment. Examples from the United States include the rupture in 2010 of a 41-year-old oil pipeline in Michigan, which spilled around 4.5 million litres of oil into the Kalamazoo River, and the 2013 failure of a 65-year-old pipeline in Arkansas, requiring 22 homes to be evacuated.

Modern pipelines built from high-quality steels are statistically safer than transporting such fuels by road or rail (J. Behar and S. Al-Azem World Pipelines 15 (4), 18–28; 2015). However, over half of US underground pipelines are more than 50 years old (see go.nature.com/gczd6b). Such aged pipelines could fail at any time from corrosion, cracking or coating deterioration (X. Li et al. Nature 527, 441–442; 2015).