The white paper aggregates data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and several other published reports from academics and industry trade associations.

As the white paper explains, pipelines are the safest means of transporting oil and natural gas, compiling an impressive 99.999 percent safety record. Operators of liquids pipelines also invested more than $2 billion evaluating, inspecting, and performing maintenance on their pipeline systems in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available.

The average salary for workers in natural gas transportation and distribution exceeds $70,000 per year, and in 2016 the United States increased its natural gas pipeline capacity by 7.1 billion cubic feet per day.

Other key facts from the white paper include:

• Pipelines support 511,899 jobs nationwide, and 165,000 jobs in Texas alone
• There are 440,000 miles of pipelines in Texas, enough to wrap around the Earth 17 times
• Pipelines in Texas add over $18 billion in gross state product each year
• Nationwide, pipelines deliver 16.2 billion barrels of oil and petroleum products every year, which is actually a 20% increase since 2010
• Since 2006, increased use of natural gas for electricity in the United States has prevented more than 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions
• Natural gas exports via pipeline to Mexico increased by over 320 percent between 2006 and 2016

The full white paper can be downloaded here.