Experiences from Turnkey Pipeline Direct Assessment Programs

Abstract Unlike a typical integrity program such as standard DA or ILI that may be conducted by the pipeline owner, a best practices turnkey Direct Assessment (DA) program comprising ECDA, ICDA, and SCCDA necessitates the executing team to scrutinize several aspects of pipeline history and its relation to the DA threat “in field” during the first (1st) step of Pre Assessment within a four (4) step turnkey DA program. A high-level DA program consists of a team of personnel with extensive background and experiences in DA itself, ILI, cleaning pigging, and above-ground CP health and coating integrity surveyor team and data analysis team. Further, it involves electrical and pipeline operations, chemical treatment/inhibition, chemical engineering/chemistry, geologist, corrosion coupon analyst, microbiologist, NDE inspectors, process engineering (fluid mechanics and mass transfer), etc. Hence, when an ILI tool classifies a specific detected corrosion anomaly as “axial grooving” or “circumferential slotting”, it would be the job of a ‘good’ DA project to provide the pipeline owner the reason that is root cause analysis, for the occurrence of that feature in a specific profile, shape, morphology, and direction. Once this reason is known within the fourth (4th) step, that is Post Assessment of a DA program, the DA project concludes with suggesting a mitigation plan for managing the threat, thereby increasing the life of the pipeline. However, in case of an ILI, the metal (asset) has already been lost, as ILI remains reactive inspection. Thus, a no-loss, net-positive outcome for a pipeline operator requires a combination of an ILI program and a high specification DA project. A massive experience of turnkey DA projects for 1,000+ pipelines, consisting of 2,000+ full size (typically 15m long) validation sites, allows the practitioner (author team) to provide the most optimized results that proactively predict not only current locations of integrity loss, but also the locations where defects may occur in the future! The aim is in sync with the pipeline owner — utilize tremendous DA experience to manage threat related consequences better.