NAICS 4862Industry group · 4-digitnational market1 market record

Pipeline transportation of natural gas

SoftwarePipeline Measurement & Hydrocarbon Accounting 486

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in the pipeline transportation of natural gas, from gas fields or processing plants to local distribution systems. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 46
Under 10 employeesA: 61%
Establishments · USA: 2,021
Employment · USA: 25,854
Payroll · USA: $3.5B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–42554%

5–937%

10–1949%

20–4949%

50–99511%

100–19937%

200–4990—

500+24%

Of 46 Canadian establishments with employees, 61% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Alberta2146%

British Columbia1430%

Ontario613%

Manitoba24%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Transportation and Warehousing, US · opened 2020

84.1%

1 year

67.4%

3 years

52.7%

5 years

36.1%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 486, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 486 Pipeline transportation

Regulated infrastructure. Not an entry market.

Who sets the price: Regulated tolls.
The software it runs on: Pipeline control, measurement and hydrocarbon accounting.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Natural Gas Transmission PipelineOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Gas transmission looks like crude transmission and is cut for a different reason. The crude record at 4861 turns on what a new line costs; this one turns on who is allowed to spread that cost. TC Energy's Canadian Natural Gas Pipelines segment earned $3,687M of comparable EBITDA in 2025, up from $3,388M, on an NGTL System whose receipts averaged 15.5 Bcf a day [A]. NGTL is a cost-of-service franchise: when it adds a lateral to a new producing area, the capital goes into a rate base that every existing shipper pays for. An entrant proposing the same lateral must recover the whole cost from the new shippers alone, so the incumbent's toll for identical steel is lower by construction, and the regulator that approves both has no reason to prefer the dearer one. The company spent $6,337M of capital in 2025 extending systems it already owns [A]. The one large greenfield line of the decade shows what is left over: Coastal GasLink, about 670 km built to feed a single LNG terminal, reached an estimated cost of approximately $14.5B, with the sponsor citing labour shortages and contractor underperformance [A] — and it was the incumbent that built it. Of 46 Canadian establishments, 25 have fewer than five employees; those are not challengers but single-asset entities and producer-owned connections. There is no weak incumbent here to take share from. The measurement and accounting software on this branch is screened separately at 486.

NAICS 48625 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 486 Pipeline transportation

Pipeline Measurement & Hydrocarbon AccountingOne thing must be true

binding constraint: market size

Incumbent Quorum Software (Thoma Bravo; Calgary and Houston)

The buyer list is a few hundred midstream operators in North America and each one buys a measurement and allocation system roughly once a decade, usually from the vendor that already holds its gas accounting. Quorum reaches most of them. A better product does not create more pipelines. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 4863 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 2

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
ATCO PipelinesPrivate	Pipeline transportation of natural gas4862	—	1/2
TC EnergyNYSE:TRP	Pipeline transportation of natural gas4862	—	2/2

Who works here

The occupations employed in Transportation and warehousing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Mail and message distribution occupations One industry 90.8%

Train crew operating occupations One industry 90.7%

Transportation officers and controllers One industry 75.7%

Transport truck and transit drivers Mostly one sector 65.4%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 63.9%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 57.7%

Contractors and supervisors, technical maintenance trades and heavy equipment and transport operators Mostly one sector 22.6%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 11.4%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 9.1%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 6.6%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 13.9%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 5.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 3.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 3.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 3.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.7%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.7%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 4862, and 2 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
48621	Pipeline transportation of natural gas	46	screened at 4862

Alongside it, under 486 Pipeline transportation

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
4861	Pipeline transportation of crude oil	38	Crude Oil Trunk Pipeline
4869	Other pipeline transportation	44	Refined Products & Specialty Pipeline