With the development of science and technology, the Internet of things technology has been gradually applied to various fields, it has become one of hot spot after the computer, the Internet and mobile communication technology. This paper focuses on the application research of Internet of things to oil pipeline leak detection. In general, oil pipelines are partially or completely buried under the ground, due to many reasons such as rust and breakage, leakage accident happens frequently. Aiming at this problem, this paper utilizes Internet of things technology to collect and process pressure signals, and detects the leakage by using negative pressure wave method to locate the leakage position, it is effective and exact.