As a result of the aging of the layer of protective insulation of buried pipelines, which occurs under the influence of external factors, in the protective layer may occur places where the insulation is broken so that there is a leak of electric current under the influence of the protective potential of the pipe. Such damages are recorded by measurements of the distribution of the pipe-to-soil electric potential (Ups) along the pipeline and the so-called "transverse and longitudinal gradients" of the electric field, which represent the difference of the potentials ΔUMN, measured by MN line with the size of 5-10 m, oriented across and along the pipeline route. A rather important task is to assess the degree and size of damage. Solving this problem is reduced to the solution of the inverse problem of electrometry for abnormal fields created by sources of different structures - point, linear or superficial. For this purpose, known methods of quantitative interpretation can be used, based on analytical relations for the differential characteristics of fields - the potential and its transverse and longitudinal gradients. For the application of these methods it is necessary that the actually measured characteristics differ little from their theoretical differential analogues.
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