Foreign information related to oil and gas pipelines has important reference significance to domestic construction and operation of oil and gas pipelines. Because most of such foreign information is confidential, free satellite photos can provide a new method for obtaining and researching information on foreign pipelines. Satellite photos can be obtained freely from Google Earth, which is a very good tool with such functions as inquiry of altitude, latitude and longitude and photos shooting dates. Such information on pipelines can be obtained from satellite photos as pipeline routes, locations of stations or valve vaults in pipelines, spacing between pipeline stations, spacing between the parallel pipelines, river crossing or overhead crossing manners, plot plans of stations, number and drive types of power equipments, and spacing of oil tanks and so on. However, due to limited acquisition and resolution of satellite photos, researches on some pipelines may be limited and even cannot be conducted. In particular, any domestic pipeline research staff is required to avoid by all means inputting important pipeline information in such foreign online software as Google Earth in order to avoid that possible backdoors result in letting out any secret.