Nearly all oil pipelines in the region head west.

But, as the Ukraine episode indicates, pipelines dedicated to a single country may be less reliable than those that run through several countries.

They also facilitate vertical and horizontal angles in otherwise straight pipelines.

Most of Turkmenistan's gas is exported through the Russian pipeline system.

Western governments aim to circumvent Russia s pipelines and import some oil and gas directly.

But a Gazprom pipeline typically costs three times as much per kilometer as a similar Western pipeline, because of leakage (kickbacks and waste).

China has managed to secure new hydrocarbon supplies through pipelines from Kazakhstan and Russia.

After all, it would be much cheaper to expand existing land pipelines than to build undersea.

Major public as well as private investments will be needed to build links between various national pipeline grids.

Sources World Bank, World Bank Development Indicators 2005 and Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 2005 (pipelines and waterways).

Asia s pipeline network is far too thin, and gas prices are among the highest in the world.

The key to energy security is diversity of pipelines as well as sources of supply.

Indeed, just as BP was being hit with new criminal penalties, ExxonMobil announced yet another pipeline leak in the Niger Delta.

It has built or is building pipelines to Turkey and Germany, taken over an oil company, and sought footholds in European distribution markets.

The Russia that Putin is building has mutated from the post Soviet hopes of freedom into an oil and gas bulwark for his new model ex KGB elite.

Moreover, an existing pipeline network implies that this conventional gas can be brought to Europe at a low marginal cost.

Indeed, his latest gambit is an effort to sell Ukraine s transit pipelines to Russia s Gazprom in exchange for cut rate gas.

Gazprom s ambitions for gaining control of pipeline and energy transport infrastructure must be slowed, which requires allowing independent producers to prosper.

The China National Petroleum Corporation holds a 40 stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum Company and has invested 3 billion in refinery and pipeline construction.

As a result, Petrobras, the Brazilian energy company, has invested huge sums in Bolivia in everything from exploration to pipelines.

An oil depot typically has tankage, either above ground or underground, and gantries for the discharge of products into road tankers or other vehicles (such as barges) or pipelines.

Natural gas, however, is the weak link. Asia s pipeline network is far too thin, and gas prices are among the highest in the world.

The bombing of a pipeline or other oil facility somewhere in Iraq remains almost a daily occurrence, and the transfer of power has not reduced these attacks so far.

However, a backlog of investments in pipeline and port capacity and more generally in energy infrastructure has put a limit on growth in the sector, at least in the short term.

Electric pipes

China views the region s resources as an essential complement to its more vulnerable maritime energy imports from Africa and the Persian Gulf, and has invested billions of dollars constructing overland pipelines.

The current Ukrainian government would happily hand over half of its pipeline system to Gazprom in exchange for a lower gas price, but Putin demands that Ukraine also join the customs union.

Energy Infrastructure The RapidEye constellation can monitor pipeline and transmission corridors and identify problems on the ground such as vegetation encroachment, nearby buildings, development of roads or leaks.

Pipelines which move petroleum products from places like Houston to areas of the east coast have had their flows interrupted because power outages shut down the pumps that kept materials flowing.

In the field of environmental protection, the Committee noted that a fibre optic sensor system was being used to evaluate fatigue on marine pipelines and risers, and on offshore drilling and oil production rigs.

Fifth, Georgia itself provides an important link to Caspian energy for all those Europeans who do not want to be totally dependent on pipelines controlled by Russia.

In 2008, there were approximately 5,800 km of pipelines in the United States, used to transport to oil production fields where it is then injected into older fields to extract oil.

The diameter of the nanotubes, the distribution of the diameter, the homogeneity along the tubes, and the lengths can be controlled.

Thirty Years of Test Tube Babies

If Obama blocks the pipeline, they will build others, and other export facilities if not on Canada s environmentally delicate Pacific coast, then at some already industrialized Atlantic port.

Europeans, for their part, are still hysterical about getting caught up in the Russia Ukraine gas dispute that left their pipelines dry for a few days at the beginning of this year.

Local lawlessness has led to gang warfare and persistent illegal tapping into the pipelines to steal oil, leading to further massive oil spills and frequent explosions that kill dozens, including innocent bystanders.

Attacks on pipelines have recently intensified ahead of a planned summit meeting between the government and various militia leaders, as small groups of militants stage attacks on oil infrastructure in the Delta to establish their relevance and win a potentially lucrative seat at the negotiating table.

Even more importantly, its direct neighbors are either completely dependent on Russian gas supplies Ukraine and Belarus or, like Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, are dependent on Russia s pipeline system to sell their gas output.

Russia's long term strategy is to try to gain control of Ukraine's pipelines by transferring them to a joint venture, as it has done in Belarus, thus enabling it to control both supply and distribution of gas to Ukraine.

In 1950s they were shrinking vacuum tubes, making them smaller and smaller. They finally hit a wall they couldn't shrink the vacuum tube any more and keep the vacuum.

Niemeyer drew straight by drawing crooked lines.

According to the United States Coast Guard, 35.7 of the volume of oil spilled in the United States from 1991 to 2004 came from tank vessels (ships barges), 27.6 from facilities and other non vessels, 19.9 from non tank vessels, and 9.3 from pipelines 7.4 from mystery spills.

The modularity of evacuated tubes can be advantageous in terms of extensibility and maintenance, for example if the vacuum in one tube diminishes.

And you'll see there is a line, a faint line going across that image.