Current situations and future development of oil and gas pipelines in the world

In the past years, global oil and gas production maintained stable growth, while production of offshore oil and gas fields, shale gas, oil sand and other unconventional resources grew rapidly. With the fastchanging production and consumption of oil and gas in different regions, construction of oil and gas pipelines and regional distribution networks is accelerated. Based on analysis of global oil and gas production, consumption and trading, this paper presents current situations of in-service pipelines and newly constructed pipelines globally to highlight future development of oil and gas pipelines. Research results show that, in the future, new pipelines will be further constructed to expand channels for energy import and export, improve oil and gas transmission network, and optimize oil and gas distribution network. Natural gas pipelines, subsea pipelines and international pipelines will dominate the global oil/gas pipeline construction in the future.