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Transcripción del abstract original del autor: In order to demonstrate the continuing safety level of natural gas onshore transmission pipelines, there has been close co-operation, for many years, between a group of nine major natural gas transmission system operators in Western Europe. In 1982, this co-operation was formalised by the setting up of EGIG (European Gas pipeline Incident data Group). Pipeline incident data between 1970 and 2001 (involving unintentional release of gas) have been collected by the gas transmission system operators from their pipeline system. These data form an extensive database and are of direct relevance to pipeline design, operating and maintenance practices in Europe. In the light of this broad experience and degree of participation, the database can be used to monitor the safety record of European natural gas transmission systems. The overall incident frequency with an unintentional gas release over the period 1970 to 2001 is 0.44 incidents per year per 1000 km pipeline (in other words : one incident per year per 2273 km). However, the figure over the past 5 years is significantly lower: 0.21 incidents per year per 1000 km pipeline (in other words: one incident per year per 4762 km). The failure rate per year has decreased by a factor 5 over the past 32 years.