Webinar: Pipeline Integrity Assessment

Corrosion Threat In-Line-Inspection Verification and Validation

Responses to Questions submitted during LIVE Session:

Q&A Responses

The transportation of gases and liquids by pipeline entails risk. The primary risk arises from the probability of an accidental release which can be violent and destructive because the contents of a pipeline are usually pressurized and often flammable and/or toxic. If a pipeline is well designed, built with care using good quality materials, properly tested and inspected, operated within its intended parameters, and it is adequately monitored, maintained and protected the risk of a release is acceptably small. To assure that the risk is minimized, the industry voluntarily creates, maintains and follows standards, specifications, and recommended practices aimed at preventing accidents and outages. In many countries governments also regulate pipeline safety by law. Except for the effects of wars, acts of God, sabotage, gross human errors or natural disasters, pipelines that are built and operated in accordance with the standards and regulations do not fail unless some kind of defect exists or is created. One may think of pipeline safety, then, as a matter of preventing or eliminating defects or neutralizing or counteracting defects which cannot be prevented or eliminated. The types of threats that exist and can degrade over time are pipeline deformation, metal loss caused by corrosion and cracking. The most common of these defects is corrosion metal loss.

This webinar is intended to provide training for pipeline personnel who must deal with the threat to pipeline safety. The material presented provides an introduction to the basic concepts of the effects of corrosion defects on pipelines and of the methods for preventing, eliminating or neutralizing them.

This webinar will review aspects of the most common method of locating and assessing corrosion metal loss in-line inspection (ILI). Of the ILI techniques used to characterize corrosion, Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) is the most widely applied technology for assessment in both liquid and gas transmission pipelines and has demonstrated reliable performance. However, there are times when the performance of these tools is not as reliable as desired.

The industry has tried to address the reliability of ILI predictions through two different industry documents, the Pipeline Operator Forum Specification and Recommendation and API Standard 1163. While both documents provide high level guidance for determining if ILI predictions can be reliably accepted, the value in returning qualified findings to ILI vendors for the purpose of improving the underlying characterization system has measurably reduced the uncertainty in ILI predictions in some instances. Many implementation and process gaps have been noted and addressed in recent years by the industry in general, and by Applus RTD in particular. This presentation discusses many of these issues and recent technological developments that are now available to the pipeline industry that can aid in the successful implementation of ILI verification and validation within Integrity Management Programs.