In the oil & gas industry, a system consisting of a network of gathering pipelines that are designed to collect raw natural gas produced from multiple wells, field facilities, and platforms to a compressor station, a storage facility, a larger transmission pipeline, or a natural gas processing plant if the gas is not suitable to enter the pipeline network. A gathering system may consist of hundreds of miles of pipelines from hundreds of wells or a few small pipelines that gather natural gas from a few wells.

A gas gathering system consists of many components, including pumps, headers, separators, emulsion treaters, tanks, regulators, compressors, dehydrators, and valves.

The two types of gathering systems are:

For more information on gas gathering systems, see Practice Note, Understanding the US LNG Value and Process Chain.