How safe are pipelines? What are the statistics?
Pipelines are the safest and most cost-effective means to transport the extraordinary volumes of natural gas and hazardous liquid products that fuel our economy. To move the volume of even a modest pipeline, it would take a constant line of tanker trucks, about 750 per day, loading up and moving out every two minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The railroad-equivalent of this single pipeline would be a train of seventy-five 2,000-barrel tank rail cars everyday. These alternatives would require many times the people, clog the air with engine pollutants, be prohibitively expensive and — with many more vehicles on roads and rails carrying hazardous materials — unacceptably dangerous. Relative to the volumes of products transported, pipelines are extremely safe when compared to other modes of energy transportation. Oil pipeline spills amount to about 1 gallon per million barrel-miles (Association of Oil Pipelines). One barrel, transported one mile, equals one barrel-mile, and the
