A Tool to Estimate the Failure Rates of Cross-country Pipelines

This paper provides a description of the different databases and various influencing factors in the development of a tool to estimate the failure rate of cross-country pipelines. The databases available cover a number of different materials transported: crude oil and liquid products, and natural gas. The various databases give excellent base data to estimate the likelihood of failures of cross-country pipelines. However, it is not sufficient to rely on these databases alone in predicting the failure rate. One needs to include the various factors: design, operating, and environmental in the estimation of the failure rate, which may change along the pipeline ROW.