Pipelines

Detail

What pipeline transport is

• Pipeline transport is moving a material through a long, closed pipe that lies on the ground or is buried under it. Pumps along the line keep the material moving.
• It is the most convenient way to move liquids and gases over long distances. Typical loads are crude oil, petroleum products (diesel, petrol, LPG), natural gas and water.
• Solids can also move by pipeline as slurry. Slurry is a solid, such as crushed ore, ground fine and mixed with water so that it flows like a liquid.
• Example: Kudremukh iron ore was sent as slurry to Mangaluru port. Kudremukh is in Chikkamagaluru district, Karnataka, in the Western Ghats. Mangaluru is on the Arabian Sea coast of Karnataka.
• Process: ore is mined in the hills → it is crushed and mixed with water → the slurry flows downhill through the pipe to the coast → at the port the water is removed and the ore is loaded onto ships for export.

Merits and demerits

Merits	Demerits
Low running cost. After the line is laid, only the pumps need energy.	High initial cost to lay the line, build pumping stations and buy land rights
No trans-shipment losses or delays. Trans-shipment means unloading goods from one carrier and loading them onto another (for example, from a train to a truck). A pipeline needs none of this.	No flexibility once laid. It serves only the fixed points it joins, and its capacity cannot be raised easily.
Not affected by weather. It works in floods, fog and snow.	Risk of leaks and theft. Leaks are hard to find on a long buried line, and oil can be stolen by drilling into the pipe.
Carries material day and night with little staff, and takes no road or rail space	Mostly carries fluids. Solids must first be made into slurry.

Why pipelines changed the location of refineries

• Before pipelines, refineries had to sit near oilfields or ports, because crude oil is bulky and costly to move by rail or road.
• Pipelines brought crude oil cheaply to places far inland. This made inland refineries possible:
• Barauni (Bihar, on the Ganga)
• Mathura (Uttar Pradesh)

• Panipat (Haryana)

• Gas pipelines likewise made gas-based fertiliser plants possible far from the gas fields. Natural gas is the raw material for making ammonia and urea.

• Result: refineries could be built near the big markets of the north Indian plains, and industry spread into the interior.

Naharkatiya–Barauni: Asia's first cross-country crude pipeline

• Oil India Limited (OIL), incorporated in 1959, works in crude oil and natural gas exploration, production and transport. Its oilfields are in upper Assam.
• OIL built Asia's first cross-country crude oil pipeline. A cross-country pipeline is a long line that crosses many districts and states, not just a short line inside one oilfield or plant.
• From Naharkatiya (Dibrugarh district, upper Assam) to Barauni (Begusarai district, Bihar)
• Length: 1,157 km

• Extended to Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh) in 1966

• Why it mattered: crude from the Brahmaputra valley could now reach refineries in the Ganga plains. This was the start of the eastern pipeline network.

The three pipeline networks (NCERT Class 10)

Network	Route	Branches	Carries
1. Eastern	Upper Assam oilfields → Guwahati → Barauni → Prayagraj → Kanpur (UP)	Barauni–Haldia (West Bengal port, on the Hooghly) via Rajbandh; Rajbandh–Maurigram (near Howrah); Guwahati–Siliguri	Crude oil and petroleum products
2. Western	Salaya (Gulf of Kachchh, Gujarat) → Viramgam → Mathura → Delhi → Sonipat → Jalandhar (Punjab)	To Koyali (refinery near Vadodara, Gujarat) and Chaksu (near Jaipur, Rajasthan)	Crude oil and products
3. Gas	Hazira–Vijaipur–Jagdishpur (HVJ)	Feeds fertiliser, power and industrial plants along the route	Natural gas

• Network 1 runs east → west, carrying Assam oil up the Ganga valley.
• Network 2 runs south-west → north, bringing crude oil landed on the Gujarat coast to refineries and markets in the north-west.
• Beyond NCERT, the Mundra (Gujarat)–Panipat (Haryana) crude line of Indian Oil also feeds the Panipat refinery from the Gujarat coast.

GAIL and the HVJ gas pipeline

• GAIL (India) Limited, set up in 1984 (as Gas Authority of India Ltd), is a public sector company that transports, processes and markets natural gas.
• Hazira–Vijaipur–Jagdishpur (HVJ) pipeline, built by GAIL:
• Length: about 1,700 km. It was India's first long-distance cross-state gas trunk line.
• Source of gas: Mumbai High (offshore field in the Arabian Sea, west of Mumbai) and the Bassein offshore field
• Start: Hazira (Surat, Gujarat), where the offshore gas comes ashore
• Through Vijaipur (Guna district, Madhya Pradesh) to Jagdishpur (Uttar Pradesh)
• States crossed: Gujarat → Madhya Pradesh → Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra is NOT on it, even though Mumbai High lies off the Maharashtra coast. This is a common MCQ trap.

• Purpose: it links offshore gas to fertiliser, power and industrial complexes of western and northern India.

• How the gas network has grown:

• Gas pipelines grew from 1,700 km (the HVJ alone) to 18,500 km, and the grid is planned to pass 34,000 km (NCERT figures).
• The aim is a National Gas Grid: one connected network so that every region can get gas. Details, including Urja Ganga, are in energy-resources-india.

Cross-border pipelines (beyond NCERT)

• Motihari–Amlekhganj pipeline (India → Nepal)
• South Asia's first cross-border petroleum products pipeline. It was jointly inaugurated by video link by the Prime Ministers of India and Nepal on 10 September 2019 [2].
• Route: Motihari (East Champaran, Bihar) → Amlekhganj (Nepal). Length: 69 km. Capacity: 2 MMTPA (million metric tonnes per annum) [2].
• Built by Indian Oil Corporation, which also rebuilt the Amlekhganj depot. IOC and Nepal Oil Corporation signed a 15-year contract (5 years at first, extendable twice by 5 years each) [2].

• Why it matters: before this, fuel reached landlocked Nepal by road tankers. The pipeline gives a steady, cheaper and cleaner supply.

• India–Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline (IBFP)

• The first cross-border energy pipeline between India and Bangladesh. It carries High-Speed Diesel (HSD), and its capacity is 1 MMTPA [3].
• Route: Siliguri Marketing Terminal of Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (West Bengal) → Parbatipur depot of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (Bangladesh). Length: about 130 km [3].
• Foundation stone laid in September 2018. Inaugurated virtually by both Prime Ministers in March 2023 [3][4].

• Cost: about ₹377 crore. India paid for the Bangladesh portion (about ₹285 crore) as grant assistance. It first supplies diesel to seven districts of northern Bangladesh [3].

• Pattern: India uses product pipelines as a tool of energy diplomacy with neighbours under its Neighbourhood First policy. Both lines start from refineries or terminals in the eastern half of India (Bihar and north Bengal).

Prelims Hooks

• Asia's first cross-country crude oil pipeline: Naharkatiya (Assam) to Barauni (Bihar), 1,157 km, built by Oil India Limited (incorporated 1959). It was extended to Kanpur in 1966.
• HVJ gas pipeline states: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra is NOT crossed.
• HVJ gas source: Mumbai High and Bassein offshore fields. Builder: GAIL (1984).
• Western network order from south-west to north: Salaya → Viramgam → Mathura → Delhi → Sonipat → Jalandhar. Its branches go to Koyali (near Vadodara) and Chaksu (near Jaipur).
• Eastern network branches: Barauni–Haldia (via Rajbandh), Rajbandh–Maurigram and Guwahati–Siliguri.
• Slurry pipeline example: Kudremukh iron ore (Karnataka) to Mangaluru port.
• Inland refineries made possible by pipelines: Barauni, Mathura and Panipat.
• South Asia's first cross-border petroleum products pipeline: Motihari–Amlekhganj (India–Nepal, 2019, 69 km, 2 MMTPA) [2].
• India–Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline: Siliguri (NRL terminal) to Parbatipur. It carries diesel, not crude or gas. Inaugurated March 2023 [3].
• Trap: "Pipelines have low initial cost." This is wrong. Initial cost is high; it is the running cost that is low.

Mains Points

• Pipelines change where industry is located (GS-I). Cheap inland transport of crude and gas freed refineries and fertiliser plants from coasts and oilfields.
• Inland refineries came up at Barauni, Mathura and Panipat, and fertiliser plants grew along the HVJ route.

• This spread industry into the Ganga plains and central India and helped balance regional development.

• Infrastructure and energy security (GS-III). Pipelines cut trans-shipment losses, road traffic and diesel use by tankers, and they work in all weather.

• Expanding the gas grid toward 34,000 km helps the shift to a gas-based economy.

• Limits to address: high capital cost, fixed routes, and leaks and theft. These call for monitoring systems, open (common carrier) access and a regulator.

• Regional imbalance. The NCERT networks are concentrated in the north-west (Gujarat to Punjab) and the Assam–Ganga belt. The east, the north-east interior and the south were covered later. This is why a national gas grid is needed for equal access to clean fuel.

• Energy diplomacy. The Motihari–Amlekhganj (2019) and India–Bangladesh Friendship (2023) pipelines replace road tankers. They lower costs for landlocked or neighbouring markets and tie neighbours to Indian refineries, as part of the Neighbourhood First policy [2][3].