I am in the camp that if there isn’t a house there now and you have to build it, it better be really really cheap. The statistical likelihood it’s going to blow up near you is very low but when they do blow up it is often biblical in scale, just do some googling for gas pipeline explosions, it’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up pretty good.
we lease 100 acres where we keep our horses in a pretty rural area, and there are 2 pipe lines on it, one North to South and one East to West they do intersect. it is an excellent riding path and the property is fenced around the line so it does not affect our fences or horses when they do maintenance. We also use this area for hunting since no horses are able to get to the gas line without a rider. I have never smelled any thing out of the ordinary, and am not bothered by the pipe lines.
i live about 200 yards from this:
http://co.williams.com/operations/atlanticgulf-operations/transco/
4 42" diameter gas lines, non-vaulted, buried about three feet deep. the washington gas light local line splits off from it on the side away from my house. valve farm is about a mile from my house.
i’ve lived there almost 25 years, and there has never been a problem. not a big problem, not a little problem. it’s just not an issue.
(of course if i ever come home from work, get out of my car and smell natural gas, i will knock on my neighbor’s door and tell her to get out, then get back in my car and drive east for about three miles before pulling over and calling 911. 
)
but yes, we do occasionally hear them pigging the lines, but it sounds like a very distant helicopter, and they do it during the day, not in the middle of the night or anything.
