Why do crude oil pipelines have minimum specs on API gravity (density)?

Question

Crude pipelines have specs on a number of properties, including viscosity and density. Specifying viscosity makes sense, but why density (or API gravity)? That is, what consequences (I assume negative) does the pipeline suffer if the API gravity is below 19° (or the density above 0.94 g/cm3), which is the spec I most often hear?

Answer 1

API Gravity is just the Specific Gravity of petroleum based products. Which comes from density of the fluid vs the density of water.

Density is mostly used for the sizing of pumps and for the spacing of pipe supports. With a higher viscosity fluid, density becomes more of a factor in sizing the pumps. Density effects the head loss in a pipe very little though.

Answer 2

I don't think has anything to do with pumping . It has to do with the quality of the oil so they will sort it to the refining process.Some very light crude need very little processing to make gasoline.