What the Pipeline Spilled

ST-01 / GEOGRAPHY

Where the Line Fails

Significant incidents by state, 2010-2025

Pipelines follow oil and gas, and so do their failures. Each state is shaded by the count of significant incidents filed there since 1986. Texas, sitting on the densest network of pipe in the country, out-fails every other state by nearly three to one - not because Texas pipe is worse, but because there is simply more of it to fail. The barrels tell the same geography harder: of the roughly 781 thousand net barrels lost across the span, the crude-oil corridor from the Gulf up through Kansas holds most of the stain.

Shade = significant incidents per state, 2010-2025, five quantile classes on the validated spill ramp. Alaska and Hawaii are inset by the Albers USA projection; territories fall outside its frame and appear only in the table.

Most incidents

01 Texas 1,323
02 Louisiana 345
03 California 290
04 Oklahoma 277
05 Ohio 158

Every state, in a table

State	Incidents	Barrels lost	Damage $M	Deaths
Texas TX	1,323	353,678	1,454.1	29
Louisiana LA	345	78,435	451.3	11
California CA	290	5,841	1,273.6	16
Oklahoma OK	277	30,912	295.4	2
Ohio OH	158	1,694	186	7
Illinois IL	150	36,155	272.6	11
Kansas KS	149	24,133	696.8	3
Michigan MI	146	6,860	1,324.4	8
Pennsylvania PA	124	12,612	254.7	21
New Jersey NJ	91	1,262	71.2	1
New York NY	91	3,610	52.6	11
Missouri MO	79	5,882	88.5	2
Minnesota MN	78	5,380	94.5	2
New Mexico NM	77	13,158	45.2	1
Mississippi MS	77	51,865	50.6	1
Indiana IN	68	1,958	102.1	1
Colorado CO	68	5,694	97.7	2
Alabama AL	67	9,897	132	4
North Dakota ND	66	26,808	166.6	2
Wyoming WY	65	7,269	38.6	0
North Carolina NC	61	12,192	215.8	2
Iowa IA	60	7,398	36.8	0
Georgia GA	60	3,549	42.5	4
Arkansas AR	57	8,449	167.2	1
Kentucky KY	52	922	99	2
Florida FL	49	778	36.5	4
Tennessee TN	48	1,898	75.6	3
Nebraska NE	42	4,455	34.5	5
Virginia VA	39	102	56.4	0
Wisconsin WI	34	2,411	91	1
West Virginia WV	34	44,997	58.6	1
Washington WA	33	320	95.5	1
Montana MT	32	2,828	205	1
Massachusetts MA	28	0	1,883.7	3
Maryland MD	26	181	22	11
Idaho ID	24	370	14.6	0
South Carolina SC	24	4,538	16.9	0
Utah UT	20	812	114.7	2
Arizona AZ	18	0	27.4	2
Alaska AK	14	1,134	89.8	0
South Dakota SD	12	50	68.1	1
Nevada NV	12	53	3.9	0
Oregon OR	7	52	20.9	0
Connecticut CT	6	304	5.1	1
Hawaii HI	6	480	5.2	0
Rhode Island RI	3	0	1.8	0
New Hampshire NH	2	15	3.2	0
Delaware DE	1	0	0.1	0
Vermont VT	1	0	0.3	0
District of Columbia DC	1	0	0.6	0

OP-02 / LEDGER

Who Spilled the Most

Top operators by net barrels lost

Ranked by net barrels lost - what was released and never recovered. The liquid haulers own this ledger, and they should: they move the most liquid through the most pipe. Watch the bottom of the list instead. The gas utilities sit there with zero barrels and the worst death tolls on the page, because gas does not spill - it finds a basement and waits for a spark. Bars share one scale; length is the comparison.

01

ENTERPRISE PRODUCTS OPERATING LLC HVL/NGL

175,068 bbl 236 incidents $169M damage 6 deaths
02

ENERGY TRANSFER COMPANY HVL/NGL

62,238 bbl 85 incidents $47M damage 1 death
03

COLONIAL PIPELINE CO Refined

25,956 bbl 81 incidents $337M damage 2 deaths
04

ONEOK NGL PIPELINE, LLC Refined

18,762 bbl 69 incidents $6M damage
05

PHILLIPS 66 PIPELINE LLC HVL/NGL

17,955 bbl 60 incidents $41M damage 1 death
06

ENTERPRISE CRUDE PIPELINE LLC Crude

14,137 bbl 116 incidents $96M damage
07

SUNOCO PIPELINE L.P. Crude

13,299 bbl 88 incidents $107M damage
08

MARATHON PIPE LINE LLC Crude

8,280 bbl 75 incidents $141M damage
09

KINDER MORGAN LIQUID TERMINALS, LLC Refined

7,463 bbl 54 incidents $36M damage
10

MAGELLAN PIPELINE COMPANY, LP Refined

6,850 bbl 80 incidents $60M damage
11

PLAINS PIPELINE, L.P. Crude

4,158 bbl 86 incidents $222M damage
12

SHELL PIPELINE CO., L.P. Crude

2,006 bbl 53 incidents $91M damage
13

BUCKEYE PARTNERS, LP Refined

1,747 bbl 76 incidents $89M damage
14

PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC CO Gas dist.

no spill volume - gas system

0 bbl 87 incidents $840M damage 12 deaths
15

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAS CO Gas dist.

no spill volume - gas system

0 bbl 64 incidents $96M damage 4 deaths
16

CONSUMERS ENERGY CO Gas dist.

no spill volume - gas system

0 bbl 60 incidents $80M damage 5 deaths

Barrels are net loss (released minus recovered). Operator totals span mergers and name changes.

OP-03 / CROSSCHECK

Barrels Are Not Bodies

Net barrels lost vs deaths, per operator

Cross the two ledgers and they refuse to agree. The liquid haulers that top the volume ranking sit along the floor of this chart: tens to hundreds of thousands of barrels, one or two deaths each. The gas utilities sit pinned to the left wall - zero barrels, ever, and 21 of the 31 deaths among these sixteen operators. A barrel count measures the mess. It does not measure the harm.

Liquid systems (crude, refined, HVL) Gas systems

Sixteen operators, span totals: net barrels lost against deaths. Gas systems report no barrels by definition, so their dots sit on the zero line - the volume ledger cannot see them at all.

Every operator, in a table

Operator	System	Barrels lost	Deaths	Injuries
ENTERPRISE PRODUCTS OPERATING LLC	Liquid	175,068	6	13
ENTERPRISE CRUDE PIPELINE LLC	Liquid	14,137	0	2
SUNOCO PIPELINE L.P.	Liquid	13,299	0	0
PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC CO	Gas	0	12	77
PLAINS PIPELINE, L.P.	Liquid	4,158	0	0
ENERGY TRANSFER COMPANY	Liquid	62,238	1	3
COLONIAL PIPELINE CO	Liquid	25,956	2	4
MAGELLAN PIPELINE COMPANY, LP	Liquid	6,850	0	0
BUCKEYE PARTNERS, LP	Liquid	1,747	0	0
MARATHON PIPE LINE LLC	Liquid	8,280	0	0
ONEOK NGL PIPELINE, LLC	Liquid	18,762	0	2
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAS CO	Gas	0	4	16
PHILLIPS 66 PIPELINE LLC	Liquid	17,955	1	1
CONSUMERS ENERGY CO	Gas	0	5	9
KINDER MORGAN LIQUID TERMINALS, LLC	Liquid	7,463	0	0
SHELL PIPELINE CO., L.P.	Liquid	2,006	0	0

SP-04 / THE SPLIT

Significant Is Not Serious

Recent 10-year annual average

The regulator counts in nested tiers, and the words are doing precise work. Significant is the wide net: a fire, a big enough spill, fifty thousand 1984 dollars of damage. Serious is the narrow one: a death or a hospitalization. Out of roughly seven hundred significant incidents a year, about one in fourteen hurts a person badly enough to count. Quote the big number as if it measured bodies and you inflate the toll fourteen-fold; quote only the deaths and you hide how often the line actually lets go. The page holds both numbers apart on purpose.

All reported incidents 563/yr

Every incident in PHMSA's flagged files that year - the significant tier is a subset. Excludes the categories PHMSA leaves out of its trend files (gravity HL, reporting-regulated-only HL gathering, Type R gas gathering).

Significant 285/yr

51% of prior

Death, injury needing hospitalization, fire/explosion, >=5 bbl HVL or >=50 bbl liquid, or >=$50k (1984 dollars).

Serious 26/yr

9% of prior

A fatality or an injury requiring in-patient hospitalization.

Fatal 1/yr

4% of prior

At least one death. A subset of serious.

TR-05 / TREND

The Line Holds, the Deaths Stay Low

2010-2025

Significant incidents held roughly flat across the span, from about 265 a year to 276, with a mid-decade bulge in between. The 2010 rule revision, pinned at the left, widened what operators must report near the start of this window. The serious count, the line hugging the floor, barely moved at all. The system is not filing many more incidents than it did in 2010. It is not killing more people either.

Significant incidents Serious (a death or a hospitalization)

Significant and serious incidents filed per year, 2010-2025. The vertical pin marks the 2010 reporting-rule revision, which widened what counts. The serious tier is a subset of the significant tier.

Year-by-year, in a table

Year	Significant	Serious	Deaths	Barrels lost
2010	265	34	19	49,191
2011	286	31	11	57,170
2012	256	28	10	29,114
2013	305	24	8	85,376
2014	302	27	19	21,914
2015	333	26	9	80,951
2016	310	38	16	46,080
2017	303	23	7	44,918
2018	293	36	6	70,448
2019	317	25	11	26,104
2020	284	27	15	105,426
2021	269	25	9	41,206
2022	262	13	1	30,351
2023	272	23	16	21,163
2024	264	22	12	48,772
2025	276	27	11	23,233

TR-06 / GAUGES

Same Years, Four Needles

Each panel on its own scale

Put the four measures side by side and none of them tells the same story. Significant incidents hold in a band near 300 a year. Serious incidents drift inside a narrower band still. Deaths spike and fall with single catastrophes - 2010, 2014, 2023 - and never settle into a direction. Barrels swing on the price and flow of crude. Anyone quoting one of these lines as if it were the other three is telling you a story the ledger does not.

276 incidents / yr in 2025

27 incidents / yr in 2025

11 people / yr in 2025

23k bbl / yr in 2025

Four readings of the same yearly ledger, 2010-2025. Panels share the x axis but not the y scale; each panel's peak year sets its top gridline and is printed in its title.

ER-07 / ERAS

The Ledger Tilts Toward Gas

Significant incidents by decade and system

Split the ledger into two halves and sort each by what the failing system carried. The gas share climbs across the window - from about 48% of incidents in the earlier band to 51% in the recent one, tipping the majority from liquid to gas. Part of that is real (an aging distribution network under growing cities), part is definitional (gathering lines only entered broad reporting in 2022). Either way, the modern pipeline incident is now as likely to be a gas leak as an oil spill.

Gas systems (distribution, transmission, gathering, LNG) Liquid systems (crude, refined, HVL)

Two even halves of the modern ledger (2010-2017 and 2018-2025). Bar length is total significant incidents on one shared scale; the printed percentage is the gas share of that era.

The decades, in a table

Decade	Gas incidents	Liquid incidents	Total	Deaths
2010-2017	1,126	1,234	2,360	99
2018-2025	1,149	1,088	2,237	81

CM-08 / COMMODITY

What the Pipe Carried

Incidents / barrels / deaths

Score each cargo three ways and the columns refuse to agree. Gas transmission leads on incidents, yet registers not a single barrel - gas leaks and explodes, it does not pool. The volume ledger belongs to highly volatile liquids / ngl, which spills oceans and kills almost no one. Each bar is scaled to its own column's maximum; read down a column to rank the cargos, across a row to see one cargo's whole ledger.

Gas transmission

1,133

-

33

Crude oil

1,000

113,265

3

Gas distribution

981

-

130

Refined products

739

179,944

2

Highly volatile liquids / NGL

583

488,208

11

Gas gathering

146

-

0

LNG facilities

15

-

1

CM-09 / SHARES

The Death Share Is Not the Spill Share

Share of incidents vs share of deaths

Take each commodity's slice of the incident ledger and follow it to its slice of the death ledger. Gas distribution - the small pipes under streets and into basements - files about 21% of significant incidents and takes 72% of the deaths. Every liquid line falls: crude oil is about a fifth of the incidents and a sliver of the deaths. The pipe that reaches your house is the one that kills.

Gas systems Liquid systems

Each commodity's share of all significant incidents (left) and of all pipeline deaths (right), span totals. Labels nudged apart where values crowd; the thin connectors point back to the true position.

The shares, in a table

Commodity	System	Incidents	Share	Deaths	Share
Gas transmission	Gas	1,133	25%	33	18%
Crude oil	Liquid	1,000	22%	3	1.7%
Gas distribution	Gas	981	21%	130	72%
Refined products	Liquid	739	16%	2	1.1%
Highly volatile liquids / NGL	Liquid	583	13%	11	6.1%
Gas gathering	Gas	146	3.2%	0	0.0%
LNG facilities	Gas	15	0.3%	1	0.6%

SZ-10 / SIZE

Most Spills Are Small. The Barrels Are Not.

Liquid systems, net barrels per incident

Sort every liquid-system incident by how much it actually released and the ledger splits in two. Three out of four spills stay under fifty barrels - a patch of ground, a cleanup crew, a filing. But the 7.6% of incidents that top five hundred barrels carry 92% of everything ever spilled. The typical incident is a puddle. The typical barrel is lost in a flood.

Five ordered size classes of net barrels lost per incident, liquid systems only (gas reports no barrels). Top: each class's share of incidents. Bottom: the same classes, same shades, as a share of total volume.

The size classes, in a table

Size class	Spills	Share of spills	Barrels lost	Share of barrels
under 5 bbl	1,417	61%	454	0.1%
5 to 50 bbl	427	18%	7,204	0.9%
50 to 500 bbl	301	13%	52,667	6.7%
500 to 5,000 bbl	141	6.1%	245,077	31%
over 5,000 bbl	36	1.6%	476,015	61%

CS-11 / CAUSE

Why the Line Lets Go

Share of incidents vs share of barrels

The backhoe gets the headlines; the rust gets the pipe. Corrosion and material or weld failure - metal quietly giving up - account for about 33% of significant incidents and an even larger cut of the volume. Excavation damage runs the other way: 14.0% of incidents but only 22.1% of the barrels, because a struck line is found in minutes while a corroded seam can bleed for days. The dominant pipeline hazard is not an accident. It is age.

Share of significant incidents Share of net barrels lost

Each cause's share of all significant incidents (dark bar) and of all net barrels attributed to a cause (orange bar), span totals, one shared scale.

The causes, in a table

Cause	Incidents	Share	Barrels lost	Share
EQUIPMENT FAILURE	1,088	23.7%	122,042	15.6%
CORROSION FAILURE	977	21.3%	72,945	9.3%
EXCAVATION DAMAGE	645	14.0%	172,716	22.1%
MATERIAL FAILURE OF PIPE OR WELD	462	10.1%	187,532	24.0%
INCORRECT OPERATION	453	9.9%	44,274	5.7%
OTHER OUTSIDE FORCE DAMAGE	413	9.0%	92,260	11.8%
NATURAL FORCE DAMAGE	276	6.0%	68,908	8.8%
OTHER INCIDENT CAUSE	149	3.2%	0	0.0%
PIPE, WELD, OR JOINT FAILURE	80	1.7%	0	0.0%
OTHER ACCIDENT CAUSE	54	1.2%	20,740	2.7%