Pipeline Safety

摘要

A new report from the National Academies' Transportation Re-search Board examines safety issues related to energy transmission pipelines, which transport virtually all of the nation's natural gas and two-thirds of its petroleum each year. The report recommends that the federal government develop guidelines for land-use decisions to minimize risks to the public, pipeline workers and the environment near existing and future pipelines. The United States is heavily dependent on transmission pipelines to distribute energy because they are the safest mode available for transporting energy fuels. Virtually all natural gas, which accounts for about 28 percent of energy consumed annually, and two-thirds of petroleum products are transported by transmission pipelines, which make up 20 percent of the 1.8 million total miles of pipelines in the United States. Energy demand has increased by about 35 percent in the last decade, and recent estimates indicate that the demand for energy fuels may increase by another 36 percent between 2002 and 2010.