Getting a Precise View of Assets

Pipeline monitoring is not new to the industry, but normal SCADA systems cannot offer the required granular asset visibility.

FREMONT, CA: In upstream, middle, or downstream activities, pipelines are a crucial component of the oil and gas business. Even though regarded as the safest and quickest way to transport hazardous materials, these crucial assets are not error-free.

Pipelines are exposed to many structural failures under the gradual effect of material flows and varying environmental circumstances. Corrosion, cracks, leaks, and debonding are the most prevalent problems.

Due to rising pressure from stricter laws, price instability, militant environmental movements, and a paradigm shift toward renewables, the oil and gas business is compelled to change. Progressive companies have progressively adopted digitalization to improve asset management and minimize costly leaks.

Pipeline monitoring is not new to the industry, but typical SCADA systems cannot give the necessary granular asset visibility. In the case of pipelines that are hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers long, it is critical to know what is happening every meter.

Several pipeline systems started in remote exploration areas with unreliable or nonexistent terrestrial networks. Therefore, monitoring choices are restricted to labor-intensive manual inspections or costly satellite subscriptions, neither of which permits the desired level of granularity in data collecting.

Even when accessible, a terrestrial connection like cellular and Wi-Fi is power-hungry and burdens endpoints with costly data plans. Frequently, sensor data is restricted in size, and a message must be sent only when a value deviates from a predetermined range. Accordingly, a cellular data plan is needless, which increases the cost of deploying and maintaining a large-scale monitoring network.

With the modern sensor and communications technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is modifying the game by making asset monitoring easier and more economical than ever. Especially, low power wide area networks (LPWAN) introduce a low-cost, energy-efficient method for collecting granular telemetry data. LPWAN can connect huge, geographically dispersed metering stations with less infrastructure due to its extensive range and star topology. Private LPWAN is ideal for the oil and gas industry since its network coverage can be customized to meet the specific requirements of firms in offshore and inaccessible places.

With tiny, multi-sensing, intelligent sensors, strong LPWAN reveals a plethora of vital information about pipelines' structural health and operating conditions. Sensor data can be sent to a local HMI for quick response, a central management system, and a cloud platform for long-term storage and analytics.

This type of IoT-allowed pipeline monitoring network can improve oil and gas operational procedures, reduce costs and downtime, minimize environmental impact, and enhance safety and regulatory compliance.

Quicken troubleshooting and response times

While a pressure drop may seem to signal a leak, other sensor metrics might help uncover structural problems with pipelines before a catastrophic leak or death explosion occurs. Ultrasonic and acoustic sensors, for example, can detect aberrant sound waves that indicate crack start, growth, and delamination.

Likewise, magnetic sensors can see a change in the wall thickness of a pipeline caused by corrosion. Any anomalies or divergences may be notified immediately with access to pipeline integrity data around the clock.

Smart sensors can carry early-stage damage and its position and severity to expedite the identification and execution of necessary actions. Reducing the time between failure and remediation is crucial to reducing material losses and contamination caused by discharged products. Detecting defects at the outset simplifies repair, following in decreased costs and downtime associated with maintenance.