The efficient combined use of water and energy in long distance slurry pipelines is analyzed in light of the total cost function resulting from an energy and mass balance. Given a system throughput and a set of common slurry and flow properties associated with long distance cross country pipelines such as Krieger-type rheology and smooth wall turbulent flow with small yield-to-wall stress, the minimum cost condition is obtained at the minimum feasible transport mean velocity. This condition has been found irrespective of the particular value of the dissipation-to-pump station location difference, provided the required pumping power is positive. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.