US National Pipeline Map

Since a few posts ago I put up the national electric grid, I figured I should do some digging to find the US national pipeline map because it plays into any and all energy analysis for the US. The map is shown below, with blue being interstate lines and red being intrastate lines.

For anyone interested in the history of Oil in America, you can basically see where it was discovered in the US based upon where the red intrastate routes are. Those routes were built before the technology to control interstate lines was available, and there wasn't the need. Everyone can thank Henry Ford for creating the need for extra pipelines.

You can also notice the regions where the Gulf oil comes into, as well as many of the regional refineries based upon the high pipeline density in certain regions.

But more importantly the gas is clustered in specific regions, same as solar energy, and same as wind. Just like the two alternative sources, the population of the US is not in the same regions. The chart below shows the population density by county, heat map style, sourced from Residual Analysis

Again, our country has an abundance of resources, but those resources tend to be concentrated in areas where people do not live, so we must transport energy away from the source. Unfortunately, any time you transport something from point a to point b you utilize energy to accomplish that, losses from electrical power due to resistance or electrical power used in pumps for no other purpose other than to transport energy.

But as always, more to come, specifically I'd like to overlay some of the data laying around to a composite energy generation/usage map.