External coatings | Russia
External coatings for pipelines in Russia
More than 90% of Russia’s 260,000km oil and gas industry pipeline network is controlled by two compa- nies , Gazprom and Transneft. Gazprom owns Russia’s unifi ed gas supply system - including gas extraction, processing, transmission, storage and distribution activities – and operates some 168,000km of pipelines, around two thirds of the total. Transneft’s main activity is in transportation of oil and petroleum products – it handles more than 90% of all the oil produced in Russia. The company operates a total of 73,000km of long distance pipelines, comprised of 54,000km of oil trunk lines and 19,000km of petroleum product pipelines. All of the other operators in Russia combined account for just 19,000km of pipelines. As might be expected, given the scale of their
networks, Gazprom and Transneft play key roles in determining the factory and fi eld-applied coating technologies used in Russia, which due to its extreme climatic conditions is also a highly demanding market for the coating industry. The vast majority of the factory-applied coatings used in Russia are employed for onshore pipelines. A number of different coating systems are used, includ- ing: fusion bonded epoxy (FBE); three layer polypropyl- ene (3LPP); heat shrinkable tapes with hotmelt adhesive layer (no primer); and three layer polyethylene with primer (3LPE). Both FBE and 3LPP coatings are sensitive to the low temperatures experienced during Russian winters.
Andrew Chalov provides an insight into the coating and rehabilitation
technologies in use in the demanding Russian oil & gas pipeline sector
Some FBE coated pipe is used but it is restricted largely to heat-insulated applications; onshore application of 3LPP in Russia is mostly in pipelines operating at high temperatures. Heat shrinkable tapes are used in some small production plants but this is mostly for small diameter pipes produced at low quantities. As a consequence, the factory-applied coating market in Russia for onshore pipes is dominated by 3LPE. As oil and gas extraction moves into Russia’s high north and Arctic Circle regions there is a growing demand for heat-insulated pipelines, either buried or laid above ground (permafrost geographies frequently make burying a pipeline impractical). Rosneft’s 560km Vankor oilfi eld pipeline, for example, includes 200km of above ground heat-insulated pipe (diameter 32 and 40-inch). Two heat-insulated projects are currently in construction; Transneft’s 490km Zapolarye-Purpe crude trunkline (30% of which is buried) and Novatec’s 300km
Main image: Demand for heat-insulated pipelines is growing in Russia as producers
move further into the
country’s northern regions
May 2014 | PIPELINE COATING 31
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