Pints in the pipeline – oil and gas engineering quenches thirst at metal festival

Heavy metal fans in Germany have put oil and gas engineering to good use - with a four mile beer pipeline providing refreshments. The newly constructed pipeline will carry around 400,000 litres of beer to the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany. The outdoors rock extravaganza is known for hard partying, with the 75,000 regular attendees consuming on average around 5.1 liters of beer over the three day event. The novel use of the network of pipes will prevent the ground being torn up by regularly returning beer trucks. It also allows the area to be farmed all year round when the music festival is not on. A spokesman for the festival said: "Until this year, we always had to move dozens of barrels through the infield. "We had to bring in full barrels before and during the shows and afterwards we had to remove the empty ones. "This caused a lot of avoidable traffic. The new pipeline helps us to protect the floor. "And we also get rid of bottlenecks at the bar, you will not have to wait for the new barrel to be on tap anymore. "The installation of the pipes and the enlarged drainage is a lasting investment in the infrastructure of Wacken. "We have paved the way for many more years of Heavy Metal at Wacken Open Air." The festival, billed as being 'louder than hell', is held annually at the start of August. Acts this year include Status Quo, Megadeath, Alice Cooper, Trivium and Volbeat.