How Are Pipelines Monitored?

Control centre personnel monitor pressure, temperature, flow rates and look for any inconsistencies which may indicate a potential leak or equipment failure. Information is fed to the control centre through remote supervisory control and data acquisition (SC AD A) systems.

Sudden, large pressure drops will trigger automatic emer- gency systems that close valves to isolate the section of the pi- peline in question.

Check yourself!

If you can translate these word-combinations your total score is 252. Congratulations!

Control centre personnel
Equipment failure
Data acquisition (SCADA) systems
Pipeline section isolation
Pipeline safety measures
Pressure and temperature gauges
Shippers - oil and gas producers
Main Control Room
Leak location
Batch tracking (liquid lines)
Composition tracking
Look ahead modeling

Task 7. Leak Detection Systems

1. Word usage and common errors,

1. Staff (Personnel) refers not to a single person but to a group. Note the alternative: ’’The new gas station has a staff of over eighty”.

Y There are over eighty members of staff at the new gas station,

X There are over eighty staffs at the new gas station.

2. Next. Explaining dates in the future, for example when arranging to meet someone, can be confusing. For example, if today is Monday and you say you will meet someone “next Friday” what does it mean? It would be clearer to say “this Friday” or “Friday this week» for the nearer date, or “Friday next week” or “the Friday after next” for the later date. British people find it confusing too - so don’t worry about asking them to make it clear what they mean. Another common mistake is:

Y I’ll see you the week after next

X I’ll see you next next week

2. Pronunciation practice.

Important asset, government regulations, internal poli- cies, population and environment, environmental constrains, minimum staff, training requirements, pipeline operators, unauthorized extractions, maximum flow, high expectation, location accuracy, hydraulic behavior, occasional leaks, unex- pected situation.

2. Read and translate the text. What notions are to be explained to the first-year students if they are to listen to a lecture on the subject? Explain the necessary notions (such as “unauthorized extractions”)

   Leak detection systems

Since oil and gas pipelines are an important asset of the economic development of almost any country, it has been re- quired either by government regulations or internal policies to ensure the safety of the assets, and the population and environ- ment where these pipelines run.

Pipeline companies face government regulation, environ- mental constrains and social situations. Pipeline companies should comply with government regulations which may define minimum staff to run the operation, operator training requi- rements, up to specifics including pipeline facilities, technology and applications required to ensure operational safety. As an example, in the State of Washington, it is mandatory for pipeline operators to be able to detect and locate leaks of 8 percent of maximum flow within 15 minutes or less.

The social situation also affects the operation of pipelines. In third world countries, product theft is a problem for pipeline companies. Sometimes one can find unauthorized ex- tractions in the middle of the pipeline. In this case, the detec- tion levels should be under 2 percent of maximum flow, with a high expectation for location accuracy.

Different types of technologies and strategies have been implemented, from walking the lines, up to satellite surveil- lance. The most common technology to protect these lines from occasional leaks is known as Computational Pipeline Monito- ring Systems or CPM. CPM takes information from the field related to pressures, flows and temperatures to estimate the hydraulic behavior of the product being transported. Once the estimation is done, the results are compared to other field references to detect the presence of an anomaly or unexpected situation, which may be related to a leak.