The paper generalizes the long -term <>'s experience on optical method developments and a practical use of instrumental (portable and helicopter) monitoring facilities including those based on Raman scattering and differential absorption methods. The main characteristics of the instruments and results of their use at objects of the largest oil -pipeline transport enterprise in Russia, Open -EndJoint -Stock Company <>, are presented At present, approximately 2 1 0000 km of main oil -, gas -and product -pipelines are used in Russia; 25% of them have an expired standard service life. 290 pipeline failures occurred from 1 99 1 to 1 996. This corresponds to an average failure rate of 0.23 failures /a year! 1000 km that is lower than in the USA or West Europe. Even so, ever -increasing requirements to oil-pipeline reliability and safety, a rise of an environmental damage responsibility make a problem of monitoring a pipeline leak-proofness to be an urgent one.Meanwhile, the existing methods of monitoring a pipeline integrity are either insensitive to low leakages (parametric) or highly expensive and not efficient (acousto -emission, acoustic, radioactive and intra -pipeline).In this connection, a rather attractive and ( as have shown our investigations) efficient, promising method of monitoring the pipeline leak-proofness is a patrol one based on using a helicopter optoelectronic instrumentation, a passive thermalimaging equipment (a main channel) and an active spectroradiometric one (an additional channel). The method's main advantages are as follows:-remotability;-high reliability (a leakage -sensitivity threshold ofup to 0.02 kg!s); -efficiency (a daily average capacity is from 40 km to 60 km/hour at a helicopter speed of 150 -200 km/hour); -accuracy (a leakage -spot location error of2-3 m); -mobilityand activity; -capability of monitoring a time development of emergencies with their subsequent forecasting; -low cost of monitoring ($4/kin).The capability of monitoring by using the airborne thermal -imaging equipment (ATIE) is due to that, in a liquid -gas transition of a high -pressure product taking place during a leakage as a result of Joule -Thomson effect, a temperature of a medium, in which this emission occurs, decreases. In consequence, there are local regions with a negative temperature contrast around an emission spot in the atmosphere, on a soil -or a water surface which can be registered by the equipment'; such leakages are usually not detected by visual methods.Demasking signatures of gas-pipeline leakages have a similar formation mechanism.Since an emissivity of oil in the thermal spectral region is different from that of any natural background (soil, water, etc.) and, hence, oil, being flowed out from an oil pipeline, usually has a well-defined thermal contrast with a background which is sufficient for its detection, the ATIE can be successfully used for a hidden oil-pollution detection. However, to increase the efficiency, it is advantageous to use an additional active spectro...
