Internal corrosion is today's major problem in the oil wells and pipelines, where much of the oil and gas emerges with water, sand, and other impurities. Those impurities include carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, and acetic acid, and these, when mixed with water, can cause catastrophic failure to the inside of oil pipelines. That's where the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology (ICMT) at Ohio University comes in. For more than a decade, researchers here have worked with a consortium of the world's 12 leading oil companies and chemical companies to come up with new ways to deal with the corrosion of pipelines that carry crude oil to the refineries, often across hundreds of miles of land and ocean floor.