Bigger drug makers have been seeking to restock their product pipelines with new offerings as older treatments lose patent protection.
The European oil companies have fields in Rivers and share pipelines with Shell, so it is possible that damaged Shell pipelines have cut off those fields.
BP four months later had begun inspecting pipelines with "smart pigs", devices inserted to detect abnormalities, when a second leak occurred.
The pharmaceutical companies, meanwhile, have come to rely on the biotech companies to help fill their pipelines with new drugs or to provide the latest technological tools.
The $38 billion transaction will create America's biggest operator of oil-and-gas pipelines with assets in all of the country's shale-gas projects.
Some firms also hope that developing countries many chock full of talented scientists will help to fill their bare pipelines with new drugs.
Along with oil refining (a refinery is connected by pipelines with Oruro, Sucre, and Santa Cruz), Cochabamba's industries include food processing, chicken farming, and furniture making.
These will, they say, be "drop-in" fuels, any quantity of which can be put into the appropriate fuel tanks and pipelines with no fuss whatsoever.
But two-thirds of its statement on energy policy focused on pipelines, with the labor federation singing the praises of pipelines, all without mentioning Keystone.
Another attraction of the deal, Mr Kindler argued, is the chance to fill Pfizer's flagging distribution channels and weak research pipelines with fresh products.
Moreover, it can work for pipelines with various size diameters, bends, and fluids.
