Abstract | Buried steel pipelines are critical lifelines that supply necessary energy resources for the economy and society. Pipelines are hazardous structures and any potential failure caused by fault rupture has to be eliminated. Various alternative protection measures are applied in practice or have been studied by researchers against the consequences of faulting on buried pipes. A comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of protection measures is presented in the paper for pipes subjected to normal and reverse fault rupture. The analysis is carried out numerically by employing the beam-on-Winkler-foundation model. The effectiveness of protection measures is compared to extract conclusions regarding their applicability. Results indicate that the most effective protection measure among the conventional ones examined is the trench backfilling with pumice, while steel grade upgrade and wall thickness increase provide little protection. Trench widening was found to be ineffective, while maximum strain reduction is achieved in the case of the introduction of flexible joints.