Foreign investment is blossoming, and a new pipeline will soon deliver natural gas to Brazil.

The pipeline delivers crude oil from the Caspian Sea basin to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, from where it is distributed with oil tankers to the world's markets.

Now nearing its 25th anniversary, the pipeline is delivering oil at only half the peak rate, reached in the late 1980's, of two million barrels a day.

That pipeline delivers gas to distributors and electricity generators in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island.

All told, the pipeline delivers more than eight million gallons of petroleum to the city each day, Mr. Haase said.

Increasing the Flow of Oil Over the summer, the pipeline delivered an average of 1.6 million barrels of oil a day from the North Slope to the Alaskan port of Valdez.

At its peak, the existing pipeline delivered 2 million barrels of oil a day, while the gas pipeline would deliver an energy equivalent of only 400,000 barrels, according to Wilson Condon, the state commissioner of revenue.

The pipeline will deliver gas to the heavy oil fields of Kern County, Calif., where it will be burned to make steam for enhanced oil recovery.

But the law gave them bragging rights on the 10th anniversary, when they could say that the pipeline delivered oil to United States refineries that otherwise would have been imported in 10 years at a cost of an additional negative trade balance of $130 billion.

Following this discovery, many small companies organized to build pipelines to deliver natural gas to nearby urban areas.