Oil and Gas pipelines play a crucial role in transporting gases and liquids over long distances, serving as the primary means of transportation for various industries worldwide. While buried pipelines remain largely inconspicuous to the general public, their integrity and security are of paramount importance. In recent years, distributed fiber optic sensing (DOFS), encompassing Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS), has emerged as a promising technology for pipeline intrusion and post-leakage detection in the oil and gas sector. DOFS relies on optical fibers which are positioned adjacent to pipelines, enabling the sensing of acoustic or temperature signatures associated with intrusion or leakage events over tens of kilometers.

In this talk, we will discuss the overview of the phenomenon, various detection techniques suitable for pipeline monitoring applications, phase-based localization of intrusion signatures, DAS-DTS hybridization, design of experiments in high-pressure pipeline testbed, and use of ML algorithms for classifications. The talk also underscores preliminary results concerning intrusion detections and identifies research gaps that need to be addressed in order to improve the practical applicability and effectiveness of DOFS for pipelines and energy infrastructures in the Indian context.