Oil pipeline in the context of "HDPE pipe"

The oil and gas industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream and downstream. The midstream sector involves the transportation (by pipeline, rail, barge, oil tanker or truck), storage, and wholesale marketing of crude or refined petroleum products. Pipelines and other transport systems can be used to move crude oil from production sites to refineries and deliver the various refined products to downstream distributors. Natural gas pipeline networks aggregate gas from natural gas purification plants and deliver it to downstream customers, such as local utilities.

Midstream in oil and gas also includes services that help oil and gas producers, such as managing and disposing of wastewater and other oilfield waste.

The Druzhba pipeline (Russian: нефтепровод «Дружба», Czech: Ropovod Družba), also referred to as the Friendship Pipeline and the Comecon Pipeline, is one of the world's longest oil pipelines and one of the largest oil pipeline networks in the world. It began operation in 1964 and remains in operation today. It carries oil over 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) from the eastern part of European Russia to points in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany. The network also branches out into numerous smaller pipelines to deliver its product throughout Eastern Europe and beyond.

The name "Druzhba" means "friendship", alluding to the fact that the pipeline established friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the reliable supply of oil. Today, it is the largest principal artery for the transportation of Russian and Kazakh oil across Europe.