Pipelines can help ensure a country's economic well-being and as such present a likely target of terrorists or wartime adversaries.
Fossil fuels can be transported by pipeline, rail, truck or ship, though natural gas requires compression or liquefaction to make vehicle transport economical. For transport of crude oil via these four modes, various reports rank pipelines as proportionately causing less human death and property damage than rail and truck and spilling less oil than truck.