Fifty Year Old Natural Gas Pipelines

My father worked for one of the larger natural gas companies which transport gas at high pressures through very large pipelines from the natural gas wells, often thousands of miles to the areas (like California) which use a lot of gas.

I grew up in the culture and the industry. Literally. I was a young boy when I started going to the shop with my Dad on weekends. As a young boy I learned to weld, learned about hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical, and plumbing. Sometimes I would ride with him if he went out on a night time call. He didn't deal with residential customers; his job was the automated instrumentation at the pumping stations located periodically along the trans continental pipelines.

They attempted to stop or reduce corrosion of these large pipelines through the use of cathodic protection. The concept does work. But fifty years is a long time too. You wouldn't send your daughter off to college in a 50 year old car, and if you had a choice you wouldn't fly in airplanes that old either. It doesn't matter how well they do the maintenance. Leaks from corrosion and pin-holing of these enormous pipelines are not uncommon.

I don't imagine the investors thought much about having eventually to replace these pipelines back when they were first laid. The guys who founded these companies were entrepreneurs. Certainly in the last 15 or 20 years obscene greed has ruled the business community. There is no big bank account or trust fund sitting somewhere which these companies can utilize to begin replacing these trans continental pipelines. The profits have all gone to big salaries and bonuses for the top executives and to the owners-shareholders.

I really don't know what they will do. By all rights they should be required to devote a substantial portion of their profits to this important safety issue of pipeline replacement, but that is not very likely.

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