Pipeline transport is an integral and most important component of the fuel and energy complex of the Russian state. The country has an extensive and highly developed network of trunk oil pipelines and gas pipelines that stretch for thousands of kilometers across the territory of many constituent entities of the Federation. Today, Russia is the only one of the industrialized world powers that not only fully meets its domestic needs for oil products, but also acts as one of the leading exporters in the world.
Thus, developed pipeline transport for the Russian Federation is an urgent economic and political necessity, as it allows us not to depend on the transit gas and oil transportation systems of neighboring states when it comes to the supply of raw materials to foreign markets. Pipeline transportation of oil, which is a kind of blood arteries of the modern world, also serves as an effective and key tool for implementing foreign policy goals by regulating the supply of petroleum products to various foreign consumers.
Also, timely and uninterrupted delivery of extracted and refined oil and gas to various domestic enterprises has a beneficial effect on the overall economic power of the country and contributes to its further strengthening. In addition, pipeline transport stimulates the development of the fuel and energy complex not only at the national level, but also on the scale of individual regions.
Such transportation of oil, the significance of which is determined by the great remoteness of the fields from the final consumer, occupies a very important position in the export balance of the country, providing economically viable pumping of raw and processed energy resources and acting as a distribution system.
The main advantages of this method of delivering liquid and gaseous energy resources include the possibility of the widespread laying of pipelines; low cost of transportation; safety of the exceptional quality of raw materials due to the perfect tightness of the line; low capital and material consumption; full automation of all processes of loading, pumping, transportation and discharge of raw materials; the small number of staff; high environmental performance of the system.
Pipeline transport is a set of highways of thick steel pipes, the diameter of which is about 1500 mm, laid to a depth of two and a half meters. Oil pipelines are necessarily equipped with special high-tech equipment for degassing, heating and dehydration of crude oil. To maintain the required pressure in the pipeline system, pumping stations are installed every hundred to one hundred and fifty kilometers.
Today, the total length of the pipelines of Russia is more than 217 thousand kilometers. Through this system, all produced gas is transported, 99% of crude oil directly from the production site, more than half of the total volume of oil refined products. Pipeline transport in Russia is developing rapidly. In particular, it is planned to lay several new highways in the direction of the Caspian region and the Persian Gulf to supply domestic oil products to the vast Pacific-Asian markets.
