Gas pipelines and city gas: Value chain

Pipe mills, compressor makers and India's city gas boom

Pipe mills, compressor makers and India's city gas boom What this tab covers Who does what, from equipment makers to builders, owners, operators, traders and users, with the leading companies at each step.

Steel and compressor makers supply pipeline builders, which hand over to transmission operators; regulated distribution companies then deliver gas to homes and factories.

The chain

Line pipe makers Compressors and drives Transmission owners and operators City gas distributors Regulators

Stage	What happens	Leading companies
Line pipe makers	Large-diameter welded and seamless steel pipe, with coatings	Europipe (Germany) Tenaris (Luxembourg/Italy)²⁵²⁶
Compressors and drives	Gas turbines, motors and compressor packages for stations	Siemens Energy (Germany) Baker Hughes (US) Solar Turbines, a Caterpillar company (US) Everllence, formerly MAN Energy Solutions (Germany)²⁷²⁸²⁹
Transmission owners and operators	Build and run high-pressure networks and sell capacity to shippers	Kinder Morgan (US) Williams (US) PipeChina (China) Gazprom (Russia)¹⁶³⁰³¹³²
City gas distributors	Build and run local mains and connect customers	Indraprastha Gas (India) Mahanagar Gas (India) Gujarat Gas (India) Adani Total Gas (India)²²
Regulators	Safety, tariffs, permits	PHMSA and FERC (United States) Bundesnetzagentur (Germany) PNGRB (India)¹⁵¹²²²

Pipelines are natural monopolies, so tariffs are usually set or approved by a regulator and owners earn a steady return on capital. Shippers and traders book capacity and own the gas; the operator only moves it. Kinder Morgan wholly owns about 42,000 miles of US gas pipeline, and Williams' Transco line runs about 9,600 miles with 62 compressor stations. Asia dominates new building: about 82% of the pipeline length under construction worldwide in 2023 was in Asia, with China alone building about 30,300 km, much of it for PipeChina, set up in 2019 to take over the national oil companies' trunk lines.

City gas is growing fastest in India. By October 2025 licensed city gas companies had connected 15.7 million homes and built 8,406 CNG stations; Indraprastha Gas, Mahanagar Gas and Gujarat Gas each had more than 2 million piped homes (calculated by summing PNGRB returns).

Sources

Understanding Natural Gas Compressor Stations Penn State Extension, 2015
Annual Report Mileage for Natural Gas Transmission and Gathering Systems PHMSA, 2026
Bundesnetzagentur approves hydrogen core network Bundesnetzagentur, 2024
Russia and China sign MoU for 50 bcm/year Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline Enerdata, 2025
City Gas Distribution MIS as on 31.10.2025 PNGRB, 2025
Europipe supplies large-diameter pipes for AUGUSTA gas transport pipeline Messe Dusseldorf (Tube trade fair news), 2025
Tenaris secures 24,500-ton pipe order for North Africa gas project World Oil, 2024
Centrifugal compressors in oil and gas Turbomachinery International, 2022
About Solar Turbines Solar Turbines (Caterpillar), 2026
MAN Energy Solutions is now Everllence Turbomachinery International, 2025
Kinder Morgan, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 Kinder Morgan / US SEC, 2026
Williams Companies, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 Williams / US SEC, 2026
Reform in the pipelines: PipeChina and the restructuring of China's natural gas market Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, 2020