Abstract: This paper reviews global development history of leak detection technology of long-distance pipelines, introduces 18 methodologies on leak detection for oil and/or gas pipelines, such as heat transfer image, ground penetration radar technology, gas image, pressure sensor, GPS timestamp, radioactive trace, volume and mass balance, pressure wave, wavelet transform, correlation analysis, state estimation, system identification, neural net works, statistic leak hunting, hydraulic gradient, etc. And detection performance index and combined performance index are introduced exactly. In the paper, authors forecast the developing trend in pipeline leak detection technology.