Life extension reliability analysis process of decommissioned transportable seamless steel gas cylinders is proposed based on reliability index and applied to a case study in this paper. The index was calculated in terms of material stress, material strength and their probabilistic distributions. Stresses were determined by membrane equations for cylindrical shell and finite element analysis for neck, shoulder and bottom. Yield strength was measured and chosen as material strength. Probabilistic distributions were determined by distribution of material hardness. Decommissioned gas cylinders, which corrode relatively more seriously than others, could be used in the analysis for conservatively determining life extension reliability. In addition, service life of gas cylinders could be extended on condition that their reliability was more than 0.99999. Finally, the proposed analysis process was applied to determine whether some decommissioned transportable seamless steel oxygen cylinders which were manufactured in 1970s could be life extended and shown to be effective. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.