Sensing pipelines health with Light
Optical fiber sensors are used around the globe to monitor the condition of difficult‐to‐access bits of infrastructure. Pipelines are certainly among them.
Optical fiber sensors are used around the globe to monitor the condition of difficult‐to‐access bits of infrastructure. Pipelines are certainly among them.
This past December 2014 Russia and Turkey signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to transport 63 billion cubic meters of gas per year via a Black Sea pipeline from Russia into Turkey and ending at the Turkish-Greek border. Generally such MOUs are non-binding.
The pipeline infrastructure in Canada and the United States is showing growing signs of wear and tear. In the past few months a series of leaks and explosions from Mississippi to Calgary have led to a number of deaths, damaged property and polluted the local environment.
As it continues to build up its natural gas infrastructure in the North Sea, Statoil has chosen SmartPlug® isolation technology, by T.D. Williamson (TDW), to safely isolate a 150 km wet gas pipeline from its Huldra platform to the Heimdal Gas Center.
To this end the company has elected to lay a 27 km pipeline from Valmont and tie into the existing Huldra-Heimdal pipeline.
For many years the Cassandras have been crying that North Sea / Norwegian Sea natural gas reserves are running out. While this may be so in the North Sea, increasing volumes of gas are being produced northwards in the Norwegian Sea.
With a renewed focus on its core upstream business, BP has agreed to sell its share of the Central Area Transmission System (CATS), a major piece of the North Sea gas pipeline system, to majority shareholder Antin Infrastructure Partners for £324m.
The National Energy Board (NEB), Canada's pipeline regulator, has announced the development of an online interactive Pipeline Incident Map providing Canadians with the opportunity to view all pipeline incidents occurring in the country since 2008.
Coming on the heels on the preliminary agreement between the P5+ 1 and Iran on its nuclear program, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) announced that it is ready to take in new consortium shareholders -- including Iran.
Nearly five years after the fatal explosion leveling neighborhoods in San Bruno, California caused by a natural gas pipeline rupture, Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation has been ordered by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to pay a record $1.6 billion in fines and other penalties.
Chevron has announced that it is increasing the incremental capacity of its 1505 km crude oil pipeline from Tengiz, Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk, Russia.
Mexico's state-run oil company, PEMEX, will begin the second phase of a 462 mile gas pipeline from Los Ramones, Nuevo Leon to the State of Guanajuato where a number of maquiladoras and automobile factories will use the natural gas as a clean source of power.
Williams, one of the premier natural gas companies in the United States, announced that it is seeking authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to expand the 60 percent Williams-owned Transco, the nation's largest volume and fastest growing interstate natural gas pipeline system running over 10,000 miles in length.
EVRAZ, a multinational, vertically - integrated steel making and mining company headquartered in London, has announced that it will invest $200 million in the construction of a large diameter pipe mill, enabling the production of thicker - walled pipe.
Statoil has begun laying the first segments of the Polarled 482 km gas pipeline project, which will transport gas from the Aasta Hansteen field in the Norwegian Sea to Nyhamna in western Norway.
DNV GL, a leading provider of technical assurance and risk management services to the oil & gas industry, has approved the STATS Group's new Techno Plug and BISEP range of pipeline isolation tools.
The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) has broken ground. The placement of the first segment of the 1850 km gas pipeline planned from Shah Deniz to Europe was celebrated by the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey in the Selim district of Kars.
Continuing its push forward, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG (TAP) has issued contract notices for companies for pre-qualify for the construction of a Pipeline Receiving Terminal (PRT) and a the laying of the onshore pipeline in Italy.
ATCO Energy Solutions and ATCO Pipelines are teaming up to manage and maintain a newly implemented pipeline monitoring system covering a 900 km natural gas pipeline in British Columbia.
In what would have been considered unthinkable just a few years ago, Israel and Egypt have struck a deal whereby Israel will sell at least $1.2 billion of natural gas from Israel’s Mediterranean Tamar field to private industrial customers in Egypt.
Canadian energy company, TransAlta, has announced the completion of a 270 km, 16 - inch gas pipeline in Western Australia. The project, legally structured as a Build, Own, Operate (BOT) venture between TransAlta and the Australian DBP Development Group, will supply gas for the Solomon gas - fired plants over a 20 - year period. TransAlta holds a 43 percent interest in the undertaking.
The Nord Stream AG can boast “only minor and short-term impacts to the environment” caused by the construction of two 1224 km gas pipelines and their current operation in the Baltic. These findings, presented at the Baltic Sea Days in St. Petersburg, suggest the considerable sums totaling over 100 million euros spent on environmental studies and route design have paid off.
DNV GL, an international certification body with main locations in Germany and Norway, has collaborated with industry to update recommended practices (RPs) for pipeline maintenance. The first for the growing number of corroded pipelines worldwide, and the second for the integrity management of submarine pipelines systems.
Principal shareholders, BP and BOTAS, in what has been billed as "the project of the century," got together this week in Ankara to sign the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline Project (TANAP) Shareholder Agreement.
Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani has dusted off 20 year old plans to build a $10 billion, 1735 km transnational Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
Potential project stakeholders, chief among them the Asian Development Bank, have been invited to a May meeting to be held in Kabul where the initial first steps will be discussed.
OAO Stroytransgaz, a Russian engineering and construction company, has been commissioned to build a natural gas pipeline across Macedonia which could eventually be used as part of a route to supply Europe with Russian gas via Turkey.