The business of producing and transporting crude oil requires the use of thousands of tons of steel, most of it in the form of tubular goods. Corrosion losses are an appreciable item to each of these branches of the oil industry and it is difficult to determine which suffers the greatest economic loss. For the pipe-line side there are approximately 150,000 miles of trunk lines in service. These have an approximate equivalent 6-inch pipe size and a weight of 7.5 million tons. On the production side there are 400,000 oil wells. These have an approximate average depth of 3,000 feet and each has one full and one partial string of casing. In addition, in most cases each has a string of tubing and a string of sucker rods. The weight of this equipment approximates 30 tons of steel per well or 12 million tons total.
Although the corrosion problem is...
