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 extremely developed network of main oil and gas pipelines, which stretch for thousands of kilometers across the territory of many subjects of the Federation. Today, Russia is the only industrialized world power that not only fully meets its domestic needs for petroleum products, but also acts as one of the leading exporters in the world.
Thus, a developed pipeline transport for the Russian Federation is an urgent economic and political necessity, as it allows 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 ofblood arteries of the modern world, moreover, it serves as an effective and key tool for achieving foreign policy goals by regulating the supply of petroleum products to various foreign consumers.
Also, the timely and uninterrupted delivery of produced and processed oil and gas to various domestic enterprises has a beneficial effect on the overall economic strength 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 oil transportation, the importance of which is determined by the great remoteness of fields from the end consumer, occupies a very important position in the country's export balance, providing an economically viable pumping of raw and processed energy resources and performing the functions of a distribution system.
The main advantages of this method of delivering liquid and gaseous energy resources include the possibility of laying pipelines everywhere; low cost of transportation; preservation of the exceptional quality of raw materials due to the perfect tightness of the line; low capital and material intensity; full automation of all processes of loading, pumping, transportation and discharge of raw materials; small number of service personnel; high environmental performance of the system.
Pipeline transport is a collection of highways made of thicksteel 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 Russia's pipelines is more than 217 thousand kilometers. This system transports all produced gas, 99% of crude oil directly from the production site, more than half of the total volume of refined oil products. Pipeline transport in Russia is developing at a rapid pace. In particular, it is planned to lay several new highways in the direction of the Caspian region and the Persian Gulf for the supply of domestic oil products to the vast Pacific-Asian markets.
