Re: Can a gas (oxygen), at atmospheric pressure, enter a pressurized container?

Don,

You question is full of unknowns, but the answer to if O2 can enter a 
steel pipeline at several hundred psi is no.  Oxygen that would come in 
contact with the steel would cause corrosion long before it ever had the 
chance to migrate into the pipeline.  Even though O2 does want to migrate 
through the walls through the natural process of osmosis, the force of 
iron oxidation rules.  If O2 is present in the gas stream it can get there 
by two ways.  1.) Naturally from the gas production zone, but not likely.  
2.) Leaks in a gas field that is low in pressure and the producer is using 
a partial vacuum to pull the gas from the zone.  I have been in the 
natural gas industry for 20 years and that is the only way we have ever 
observed O2 in the gas stream.  Oxygen in a high presure natual gas strema 
does significant corrosion damage in a short period of time.