45% of U.S. Crude Oil Pipelines Are Over 50 Years Old and Corroding

Nearly half of all crude oil transmission pipelines in the United States were installed more than 50 years ago, with some segments dating back to the 1920s. These aging steel pipes are subject to both internal and external corrosion, metal fatigue, and weld failures that worsen with every passing decade. Corrosion alone accounts for roughly 23 percent of all significant pipeline failures reported to PHMSA, and in offshore Gulf of Mexico pipelines, corrosion causes a full 50 percent of all failures. This matters because when a corroded pipeline fails, the consequences cascade. A single rupture can dump tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into rivers, aquifers, and farmland within hours. Cleanup costs routinely reach tens of millions of dollars per incident, and contaminated soil and groundwater can take decades to remediate. Communities near aging pipelines live under a constant low-grade threat to their drinking water and property values, yet have little visibility into the condition of the pipe running under their land. The problem persists for structural reasons. Pipeline operators face a classic capital allocation dilemma: replacing a functioning-but-aging pipeline segment costs millions of dollars per mile with zero incremental revenue, while the probability of any specific segment failing in a given year remains statistically low. Regulatory inspection mandates exist but are stretched thin across 2.6 million miles of pipeline. PHMSA, the federal regulator, has historically been underfunded relative to its oversight scope, and inline inspection tools (smart pigs) cannot even run through many older pipelines that were built with tight bends and varying diameters. The result is a system where replacement happens reactively, after failure, rather than proactively.