How Natural Gas Moves: The Three Types of Pipelines

The natural gas industry works a lot like the package delivery system.

Just like Amazon does not send a 747 to your front door to pick up a small package, the natural gas industry uses different sizes of pipelines depending on where the gas is in its journey.

Gathering Systems

These are the small delivery vans of the industry. Small-diameter pipelines collect gas from thousands of individual wells and bring it to central points. Their job is to gather and aggregate production from a wide area before moving it forward.

Transmission Pipelines (Mainlines)

This is the big jetliner part of the system. These are the large-diameter, high-pressure pipelines, sometimes three to five feet across, that move massive volumes of gas across states and across the country. This is where the long-haul transportation happens.

Distribution Systems

Once the gas reaches its destination area, the Local Distribution Companies, or LDCs, take over. This is where the giant package gets broken down again. The gas moves from large transmission pipes into progressively smaller pipes until it can safely reach homes and businesses through relatively small service lines.

You would not want a five-foot pipeline running down your street, just like you would not want a jumbo jet landing in your driveway. The system intelligently steps the gas down in both volume and pipe size as it gets closer to the end user.

In the Ascend course, we go deep into all three pipeline systems: how they interact with each other, how gas is handed off between them, how nominations and confirmations work across multiple pipelines, and why coordination between these systems is so critical.

By the end of the course, you will have a clear, practical understanding of how these three very different pipeline systems work together every single day to keep energy flowing reliably across the country.