Our group has launched a “3D Pipeline Spatial Data Model, 3D GIS Web Services and Their Application in Long Transmission Oil&Gas Pipeline” international cooperation research project that intends to make breakthroughs in the aspects of 3D pipeline spatial data model design and implementation, 3D GIS web service framework that suits 3D pipeline GIS, openness and interoperability of the 3D pipeline data, and big pipeline scenes rendering and optimizing etc. so as to guide the application of the web-based 3D pipeline GIS to a more practical phase. Developing a 3D pipeline spatial data model (3D-PSDM) towards web-based 3D pipeline GIS application is the foundation of this project. 3D-PSDM fully took the spatial feature of pipeline data into account. Each geometry element in the 3D-PSDM was added an additional coordinate to three dimensions. The 3D-PSDM integrated with open Web3D technologies such as X3D (Extensible 3D) to make it possible to create 3D referenced pipeline scenes that can be deployed on the web, and to ensure the pipeline GIS data interoperability and reusability. Considering the wide use of PODS (Pipeline Open Data Standard) and APDM (ArcGIS Pipeline Data Model) in the pipeline industry, 3D PSDM took them as the start point so as to utilize their advantage. The intention is to develop a 3D pipeline data model that is independent to current prevalent pipeline data models, while capable of being easily integrated with them. The detailed design and implementation of the 3D-PSDM, including its spatial-enable support, effective methods to manage large 3D datasets of pipeline, and efficiently display 3D datasets under a network environment, are described in this paper. Pipeline datasets provided by PetroChina Pipeline were used to verify the 3D-PSDM. The application results, the advantages and things need to improve for the model are also discussed.