Transportation: The Invisible Network: A Revolution Underground

A huge new transportation system —outranking rails and airlines — is spreading across the U.S. in a spaghetti-like maze. Nearly a million miles long, it is almost completely invisible, carries no passengers, is deterred neither by rivers nor mountains. It is the nation’s rapidly growing network of oil, gas and product pipelines, which now extends into all of the 49 continental states. Last week the biggest product pipeline of them all, built by Atlanta’s Colonial Pipeline Co., slowly threaded its 36-inch ribbon of steel through the swamps and suburbs of New Jersey, two feet underground. Only ten more miles will mean the completion of a 1,600-mile link between Houston and New York.

The pipelines, says Joseph C. Swidler, chairman of the Federal Power Com mission, have had “a revolutionary impact on our economy.” The revolution started in World War II to thwart tanker-hunting U-boats; the Big Inch and the Little Inch, from Texas to the Atlantic Coast, were the first major lines. Since then, pipelines have grown so fast that they now transport more than 30% of all the energy used in the U.S. They have created a revolution >n home-heating and cooking, provided cheaper industrial power and, less happily, caused severe wrenches in existing coal and oil industries. Twenty-four million U.S. homes—twice as many as a decade ago—now heat with pipelined natural gas. Because of the pipelines, oil companies now locate their refineries nearer the oilfields and ship refined products at lower cost instead of building plants near markets.

The Big Yard. Most of the pipe network, whose smaller spurs link towns and even plants, is owned either by consortiums of companies or by eight independent transmission companies, led by Houston’s Tennessee Gas Transmission Co. So much pipe has been emboweled about the petrochemical suburbs of Houston that the area is called “the Spaghetti Bowl.” Near Harrisburg, Pa., five different pipelines parallel one another through the Allegheny Mountains. Pacific Gas & Electric’s 36-in., 1,400-mile “Big Yard” carries 600 million cu. ft. of Canadian natural gas daily to 34 California counties and to Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The Big Yard is the largest, longest gas pipeline in the U.S., but it may soon be surpassed by a 1,550-mile line that will carry Texas gas to the Los Angeles plants of California Edison.

Putting down the line is the hardest and costliest part of pipelining; in rough terrain it can cost $150,000 a mile, always requires many pieces of special machinery to dig the ditches and successfully lay the pipe. But once in place, pipelines are impervious to weather and immune to strikes, operate day and night with rare breakdowns and only occasional pumping station overhauls. They eliminate the costly necessity of deadheading empty cars, barges or tankers, are so automated that only a handful of men can monitor a cross-country system. Pipelines are thus the cheapest transportation available for bulk commodities: gasoline can be shipped from Texas 900 miles to Chicago for less than a penny a gallon.

Land Mines in the Way. In many ways, pipelines operate very much like railroads. On product lines, which carry various liquids, shipments are pushed along under pressure generated by jet engines. Bulk shipments, or “slugs,” of crude petroleum, diesel fuel, gasoline, jet fuel, even butane and propane, follow each other through the pipe without interval: uniform pressure keeps them from mixing, and specific gravity dials at each pumping station tell when each has passed. Shipments already in line can even be temporarily sidetracked into storage pits or pipes to let high-priority slugs pass through. Moving at 2½ m.p.h., Houston’s petroleum products reach New York in 21 days.

Because in most states pipelines take property by eminent domain and raise fears of various dangers in some people, their construction is often contro versial. Dealing with 14,000 property owners as it moved north, Colonial had to file 400 condemnation suits, settle 50 damage suits, soothe a Mississippi farmer who sowed land mines in the way and Pennsylvania pickets who sat down in front of bulldozers. Actually, accidents are almost unheard of. Mod ern lines are made of high-strength steel, electrically welded, tested for leaks and wrapped in fiber glass and asbestos felt before they are buried. Airplanes regularly patrol the lines in search of the yellowed foliage that indicates a gas leak in the area, and sensors along the line also keep guard.

Despite some unpopularity, pipelines have nothing but more growth ahead. Newer and stronger types of lighter steel pipe are being produced to carry material under greater pressure. Pipes can also carry sugar cane and iron ore, and tests are under way to make them carry wheat, wood pulp, sand and gravel. The president of one pipeline com pany has even suggested, not completely facetiously, that men and women could also be transported via pipe, moving at high speeds in tubular cars separated by air cushions.