Pipeline transport in order to avoid melting the frozen ground by hot petroleum which would result in sinking the pipeline in the ground. Maintenance of pipelines includes checking cathodic protection levels for the proper range, surveillance for construction, erosion, or leaks by foot, land vehicle, boat, or air, and running cleaning pigs, when there is anything carried in the pipeline that is corrosive. US pipeline maintenance rules are covered in Code of Federal Regulations(CFR) sections, 49 CFR 192 for natural gas pipelines, and 49 CFR 195 for petroleum liquid pipelines. In the US, onshore and offshore pipelines used to transport oil and
Pipeline transport employee in Michigan. Although the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has standard baseline incident frequencies to estimate the number of spills, TransCanada altered these assumptions based on improved pipeline design, operation, and safety. Whether these adjustments are justified is debatable as these assumptions resulted in a nearly 10-fold decrease in spill estimates. Given that the pipeline crosses 247 miles of the Ogallala Aquifer, or 14.5% of the entire pipeline length, and the 50-year life of the entire pipeline is expected to have between 11 – 91 spills, approximately 1.6 – 13.2 spills can be expected to occur over