Utilising Digital Tools for Pipeline Integrity Assessments

Background

The client, an oil and gas company, approached Penspen to conduct a Fitness for Service (FFS) and a corrosion investigation study on one of their offshore to onshore 20-inch crude oil pipeline constructed in 2001. The pipeline was suffering from heavy internal corrosion, and several leaks had been reported in the past. The pipeline was inspected by multiple vendors on a yearly basis between 2009 to 2023.

The project schedule was identified as a risk due to the volume of work that had to be reviewed, the complexity of the study, and the tight deadlines stipulated by the client.

Our Approach 

Conducting an integrity assessment on a pipeline with several thousands of anomalies can be challenging, especially when the delivery timelines are very tight. Penspen engineers were able to leverage their technical expertise and their in-house developed software, THEIA to deliver the work and meet the client’s requirements.

The integrity engineers were able to complete the following activities, which require significant effort and considerable time when performed manually and using conventional tools, quickly and efficiently:

• Complete feature and anomalies matching of multiple pairs of ILI (In-Line Inspection) results,
• Calculate Corrosion Rates for all matched ILI results
• The client mentioned that they normally would spend up to one month to do feature matching and corrosion rate calculations for only one pair of ILI runs. However, it took our Penspen team one day for 3 pairs of ILI runs by utilising THEIA
• Conduct Deterministic Future Integrity Calculations based on ASME B31G/DNV-F101 and Kastner method

Result

Deploying a Digital Pipeline Management Solution such as THEIA proved to be an invaluable tool, processing all the information records efficiently and easily for the client to refer to and significantly reducing the time taken to perform key integrity assessments. As a result, the project was fast-tracked to completion, and the client was provided with recommendations on the maintenance actions required to improve the integrity and reliability of the pipeline.