Negative pressure wave signal caused by pipeline leakage and attenuation along the pipe was relative to pipe length, working condition and leaking hole diameter. In order to solve the problems of low precision and poor reliability in traditional monitoring methods, a negative pressure wave-based pipeline leak monitoring method using optical fiber pressure sensors was proposed. According to the propagation law of negative pressure wave in the pipeline, by increasing the density of sensors along the pipeline, the signal attenuation would be reduced, and a clearer negative pressure wave falling inflection information could be acquired. According to the leak difference in sensor section, a new adaptive method based on leaking distance was proposed for calculating the velocity of negative pressure wave. Finally, the optical fiber and traditional negative pressure wave leakage monitoring methods were analyzed respectively, experimental results showed that the leakage location error of fiber optic monitoring method was less than 1.6% when the leakage was 5% of the total pipeline transportation. Compared with traditional monitoring method, fiber optic monitoring method could obtain higher sensitivity and positioning accuracy, has more broad application prospects.