The Humber Gas Tunnel is a natural gas-carrying pipeline that runs underneath the Humber Estuary between Paull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and Goxhill in Lincolnshire, England. The project was started in April 2018, and the pipeline was used to transport gas for the first time in December 2020.

Presentation image

It is designed to carry 20% of the gas used in the United Kingdom and is a crucial feeder pipeline to carry the gas to the south of England. It is the longest pipe in a tunnel in Europe, and due to being inserted into a tunnel that was deliberately flooded with water, it is the longest hydraulically inserted gas pipeline in the world.

Construction of the tunnel began in April 2018 and it now stretches under the Humber estuary at a depth of up to 30m, with a diameter of 3.65m. Given this scale, the excavations involved were complex. Carried out by a tunnel boring machine affectionately named ‘Mary’ by the project teams, they resulted in as much as 160,000 tons of material.

The pipeline replaces an existing one that sat on the riverbed, but this had become exposed due to erosion. The replacement will help ensure the reliability of supply to UK homes and businesses, bringing in as much as a quarter of Britain’s gas supplies.

According to the Wikipedia