The use of corrosion-resistant thermoplastic pipe linings is now standard practice for water injection wells to oil fields, particularly in subsea applications. The application of this technique for the corrosion control of pipelinss for the transport of hydrocarbons, however, has met with mixed success to date. This is due to the permeation and absorption of the low molecular weight factions of the transported fluids leading to unstable structural behaviour of the lining, and hence loss of flow capacity and lining puncture. In this paper permeation and swell are shown to be the prime sources of possible hoop and longitudinal
buckling of the lining respectively, and small scale laboratory testing techniques for the preliminary investigation of each category of problem are described. The initial results so obtained are then described and the implications for system design discussed.