Session: 03-62 Pipeline Technology Integrity

Submission Number: 185612

Harnessing Impactful R&D in Pipeline Integrity Management 

In the last few decades, the world has progressed significantly, especially in data driven technologies radically changing how we work, travel, communicate, and play. In pipeline integrity management we have harnessed many new technologies for Inline inspection (ILI), used drones and satellites for surveillance, and adopted many technologies that provide useful data on the salient hazards.  Incident data is also available to determine trends and performance improvement. With prudent use of this data and new technologies we can radically improve how we manage large integrity budgets with safety.

It is critical to determine the most dominant challenges and trends that compromise safety and mitigate emerging threats. As each pipeline system is different, with varying dominant hazards, operational needs, data records, and terrain, the innovations that are relevant to each system are varied.

Both North American and European incident data has been analyzed and finds corrosion has high failure rates and corrosion rupture rates particularly are not decreasing. Corrosion also drives collective annual budgets of a couple of billion dollars (in North America).  Are we using the full capability of ILI tool data, models, and data driven processes that tangibly improve safety and reduce unnecessary actions? Have we, for more than 40 years, used +/-10% with 80% confidence as ILI tool error? Are we using assessment models and data processes developed more than 30 years ago when data and computational power was dismal?

Safety is paramount. To ensure, monitor, and improve safety a clear measurable definition of safety and reliability is essential. A major decision process, such as the process to decide on where a pipeline needs to remediate corrosion this year, incorporates many sub decisions, such as which tool to run, how to model the uncertainties, failure states, growth etc. The combination of these sub decisions defines system reliability but is often not considered holistically. System reliability defines how the reliabilities of sub decisions combine to provide safety.

This paper examines incident data and related trends to understand if dominant threats are effectively managed.  It also provides means to determine if adopting new technologies would impact system reliability and budgets. All innovations and new technologies make generalized claims for improvement. With the right set of data analytics those claims can be quantified to check the Return on Investment (ROI) for a particular pipeline or system.

This paper demonstrates data driven decision making that enables identifying appropriate new technologies to optimize system reliability and reduce unnecessary expensive actions. A case study demonstrates how a pipeline inspected with different tools, assessed with different models and processes, can safely give you anywhere from over 1500 to 2 excavations. This demonstration gives safe options but at a cost difference of over $100 million for one pipeline. More actions alone do not give better safety. This paper demonstrates how you can determine the right actions at the right time that will give safety, economy, and consequent sustainability when clear definitions of safety and reliability are adopted.

Presenting Author: Shahani Kariyawasam, Pipeline Research Council International

Presenting Author Biography: Shahani has led innovative engineering projects on all continents (except Antarctica) collaborating with international operators, vendors, regulators, standards committees, and industry organizations. She graduated from University of Alberta with a Ph.D. focused on risk and reliability.
She has worked with PRCI, TC Energy, GE Oil & Gas, C-FER Technologies, and Universities. She has published over 60 papers and is the inventor of several patents. She is a recipient of the APEGA gold medal, TC Energy CEO Safety Awards, CEPA quality Award and the Global Pipeline Award for the innovations she has led. Presently with PRCI, she is the Executive Director of Knowledge Transfer.

Authors:

Shahani Kariyawasam Pipeline Research Council International