October 2015
Ageing Pipelines Conference
Ostend, Belgium
Conference Paper
Pipeline Asset Integrity Surveys: A Systematic Approach Case Study
The corrosion of oil and gas industry hydrocarbon-processing and transportation infrastructure is a multi-billion dollar perpetual headache for operators around the world. This is especially true for the industry’s older equipment, much of which is still in service, well beyond its design life.
If left unchecked, corrosion has the potential to cause permanent damage to equipment, potentially leading to deferred production, spills (with the resulting financial penalities and reputation issues), and more importantly, signficiant HSE implications. Corroded equipment may also require repair or replacement, increasing CPAEX and OPEX costs.
On older, in-service items of infrastructure, it is commonplace to find incomplete service, maintenance and inspection records. Thus the internal condition and viable service of many ciritical pipelines may be unknow. This point is especially pertinent for usbsea pipelines, here physical inspection may not be possible. The management and mitigation of corrosion in these pipelines can therefore be an enormous task.
In this paper, we describe a case study, whereby a network of over 600 subsea pipelines was surveyed in a cost-effective and systematic way. It was not practial to survey all of the pipelines, and so a representative sample of the concession, was surveyed. The pipeline survey selection process, including the identification of the most ‘at risk’ and critical’ pipelines is discussed, along with pipeline parameters measure during the survey.
The review of the collected data, relating to the corrosion of the pipelines and their serviceability, both on individual and macro field-wide scales is detailed in this paper, along with findings from the data and recommendations made for planning of regular pipeline integrity monitoring.
