With the wide application of clean energy, improving the transportation efficiency of gas pipeline has become a hot issue, among which, it is very important to reduce the friction resistance in the pipeline transportation process. In order to explore the application effect of triangular riblet in the drag reduction of gas pipeline, ANSYS?FLUENT software was used to numerically simulate the turbulent flow in smooth pipeline and riblet pipeline. The results show that: in the near wall area, the velocity profile of ribbed pipe and smooth pipe has a big difference, and the difference is small in the mainstream area. The drag reduction effect of riblet structure is mainly based on the near?wall surface. The riblet structure pushes the vortex away from the wall surface, filling the rib bottom with low?speed fluid, reducing momentum exchange near the wall surface and friction resistance. Compared with the smooth wall surface, the riblet structure with the size of s＝h＝0.516 5 mm has a drag reduction effect of 4.38%.