Summary | Buried pipelines are classified as hazardous structures as among others due to their extended length crossing areas prone to large ground deformations due to seismic fault activation is usually inevitable. In this case a potential failure mode is upheaval buckling under acting compressive forces, due to reverse fault activation. In the present study the risk of upheaval buckling of buried steel pipelines is numerically investigated against other failure modes by also accounting for geometrical and pipeline steel and soil nonlinearities. Obtained results indicate that upheaval buckling is not the critical failure mode. Instead inelastic local buckling is the critical failure mode for the relatively deeply buried pipeline under investigation characterized by high diameter to thickness ratio.