Why Lay Pipelines On The Ocean Floor?

The human ability to transform the earth is amazing! Various Submarine Pipelines laid by humans can be found even at the bottom of a few thousand meters. Some of them stretch for thousands or even tens of thousands of kilometers on the seafloor, like a link connecting seven continents and five oceans.

These subsea pipelines include pipelines and cables laid on the seabed. Don't underestimate these long pipelines, they have great uses! Submarine pipelines can transport oil, natural gas and water over long distances, submarine cables can transport electrical energy over long distances and realize long-distance communication, and submarine optical cables can help people achieve long-distance communication. For example, most of the overseas calls we make are through these submarine cables and optical cables!

With the continuous development of offshore oil and gas fields, submarine pipelines have become the fastest, safest and most effective means of transporting oil and natural gas. It can realize continuous transportation, and will not force the oil field to reduce production or stop production due to the capacity limitation of offshore oil storage facilities and the untimely delivery of oil tankers. Since it is laid on the seabed, in order to ensure safety, the submarine pipelines must be able to withstand high pressure, wear, and corrosion. Depending on the specific subsea environment, the materials used in subsea pipelines are different, some are steel pipelines, some are cement pipelines, and some are plastic pipelines, such as polypropylene pipes.

In 1850, the world's first submarine cable was built between Britain and France. Eight years later, the United Kingdom laid another submarine cable connecting the United Kingdom and the United States on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, realizing the transatlantic telegraph communication between the European and American continents. The invention of the telephone further promoted the construction of submarine cables, so that the submarine cables can be used not only to generate telegrams, but also to make phone calls. By 1902, the global submarine communication cable was built, which greatly shortened the global communication distance in an instant.

In 1960, American scientists invented lasers, and people began to use the characteristics of lasers to transmit in optical fibers to transfer information. With the rapid development of Internet communications, the construction of submarine optical cables has also developed rapidly. More than 100 countries and regions in the world have established the most modern global communication network through submarine optical cables. More than 80% of the world's communication traffic is borne by submarine fiber optic cables, and many submarine fiber optic cable systems have reached 10,000 kilometers in length. According to incomplete statistics, the total length of the global submarine optical cable is already close to 100 million kilometers.

You may ask, why are these cables not laid on land, but must be laid on the seabed? It turns out that laying cables on the seabed has many advantages. First of all, laying on the seabed does not require digging pits or supporting with the same as laying on land, so the cost of laying is low, the investment is low, and the construction speed is fast; secondly, after construction, it is not susceptible to human interference and damage. For submarine optical cables, seawater can also prevent interference from external electromagnetic waves, increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the optical cable, and improve the communication quality of the optical cable.

Today, the relationship between Submarine Pipelines and people's daily lives is getting closer and closer. If there is no submarine pipeline, the transmission of offshore oil and gas may be hindered; if there is no submarine optical cable, we cannot support the global Internet, and we cannot surf the Internet freely and make calls... except that the oil and gas and communications industries need to lay pipelines on the seabed. Many other industries, such as marine scientific research and marine military construction, need to lay cables and optical cables on the seabed.

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