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OIL & GAS/RENEWABLES


A SMART WAY to protect oil and gas pipelines


Pedro Barbosa, Product Owner, at Fotech, a bp Launchpad company, looks at the current threats to oil and gas pipelines and discusses how advanced distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology helps operators monitor and maintain their pipeline networks effectively


making cost savings. One way this can be achieved is through monitoring and maintaining the integrity of the pipeline networks. Threats to pipelines typically include leaks


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resulting from pipeline failure through corrosion or mechanical damage, or theft- related events. Inadequately monitoring against these threats can easily cost an operator millions in lost fuel from leakages and stolen product. Leaks also pose a significant risk of, and the cost associated with, environmental damage to the surrounding area. Monitoring for leaks is typically achieved


using internal based systems, which infer the presence of a leak. These systems – such as mass balance and real time transient modelling (RTTM) – use computational pipeline monitoring (CPM) to calculate different operational conditions. However, they tend to have very low sensitivity to small leaks and long detectability times. As such, leaks are often missed or alarms are raised when large quantities of product have already been lost. Alternatively, external based systems such


as Fibre Optic Sensing take direct measurements of different response


34 APRIL 2022 | PROCESS & CONTROL


il and gas plants and operators are under pressure to reduce risk across their businesses while simultaneously


dynamics associated with the leak, such as the noise produced by the orifice leak. This provides a quicker detection of smaller amounts of product. Another external based system is right-of-


way surveillance. Here, ground patrols and aerial surveillance are used to spot any unusual activity, however they do not provide continuous detection of events. As a result, large sections of pipeline might be entirely unmonitored and extremely vulnerable to accidental damage or even criminal threats for large periods of time. There is a critical need for a continuous


monitoring solution that enables operators to detect leaks and theft attempts more accurately and quickly.


Distributed Acoustic Sensing One technology that is able to monitor pipelines accurately for both leak detection and disturbances relating to attempted theft is distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). For example, Fotech’s LivePIPE solution uses photonic sensing DAS technology that


essentially turns a fibre optic cable running alongside a pipeline network into thousands of vibration sensors, able to detect any disturbances along the length of the pipeline. The technology sends thousands of pulses


of light along the fibre optic cable every second and monitors the fine pattern of light reflected back. When acoustic or vibrational energy – such as that created by a leak or by digging – creates a strain on the optical fibre, this changes the reflected light pattern. By using advanced algorithms and processing techniques, DAS analyses these changes to identify and to categorise any disturbance. Each type of disturbance has its own signature and the technology can tell an operator, in real-time, what happened, exactly where it happened and when it happened. LivePIPE technology effectively provides an


invisible smart barrier along the entire length of the pipeline, which can accurately detect and alarm leaks of different sizes and their position along and around the pipeline in real time. DAS is able to detect vibrations caused by liquid being forced through a pipeline


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