Pipeline Integrity Management: Staying Ahead of Corrosion

Pipelines carry hydrocarbons over long distances, often through places that are hard to reach: under the seabed, across rivers, or near communities. When a pipeline fails, the impact on safety, the environment and production is severe. Of all the threats a pipeline faces, corrosion remains one of the most persistent, because it never stops working on the steel.

Know your threats

A pipeline integrity management programme starts by identifying which threats apply to each segment. Standards such as ASME B31.8S group them into categories, including:

• Time-dependent threats: internal corrosion, external corrosion and stress corrosion cracking.
• Stable threats: manufacturing and construction defects.
• Time-independent threats: third-party damage, incorrect operations and weather or ground movement.

Corrosion is time-dependent, which is both the challenge and the opportunity: if you can measure how fast it grows, you can predict when it will become a problem.

Inline inspection: seeing inside the pipe

Inline inspection (ILI) tools, often called intelligent pigs, travel through the pipeline and record wall loss and other features along its full length. Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) and ultrasonic (UT) tools are the most common for metal-loss detection.

A single ILI run tells you where the defects are today. Comparing successive ILI runs tells you how fast they are growing, which is the most valuable input for planning what to do next.

From defect to decision

• Assess each defect with a recognised method such as ASME B31G or DNV-RP-F101 to estimate its remaining strength.
• Apply a corrosion growth rate to predict when the defect will reach its limit.
• Decide the response: repair now, reduce operating pressure, or monitor and re-inspect before the predicted limit.
• Address the cause: check cathodic protection, coating condition and corrosion inhibitor programmes so the growth rate goes down, not just the defect count.

Why data management matters

ILI reports, cathodic protection surveys, pressure test records and repair histories are often held in separate systems and formats. When they are not aligned to the same pipeline segment, it is easy to miss a pattern, such as a cluster of defects where CP readings have been low for years. Bringing that data together is what turns individual inspections into a real integrity picture.

How Enrise AIMS supports pipeline integrity

The Pipeline Module in Enrise AIMS brings corrosion assessment, ILI anomaly analysis, pressure test records and inspection planning into one place. Anomalies can be tracked through to closure in the Anomaly Management System (AMS), so nothing found in an inspection is left without an owner or a decision.