Methodology for ranking internal corrosion-induced leakage susceptibility in oilfield pipelines

ABSTRACT

This investigation focuses on the ranking of pipeline leakage susceptibility of two categories of pipeline systems. One consists of three oilfield water-handling pipeline systems and the other consists of five dry crude systems. Online corrosion monitoring (OCM) method was used for both systems, forthermore, in-line inspection (ILI) method, with Magnetic Flux leakage (MFL) tool, was also used for the dry crude systems. The OCM leakage susceptibility potential is derived from the combined severity of general corrosion, pitting corrosion, fluid corrosivity and sessile bacteria population density in the process streams. The ILI leakage susceptibility potential is derived from the average number of corrosion anomalies greater than 10% of the wall thickness and the maximum depth of the anomalies (as percentage of the wall thickness). In spite of such distinctions, the ranking of pipeline leakage susceptibility for the five dry crude pipeline segments turned out to be identical for the two methodologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Internal corrosion
• leakage susceptibility
• oilfield pipelines

Acknowledgement

The support of Kuwait Oil Company is hereby acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).