Remote Oil and Gas Pipeline Integrity Monitoring Systems

Pipeline pig tracking

Pipeline operators regularly perform mechanical pigging to ensure pipeline cleanliness, batch pigging to deploy different products, and inspection pigging essential to maintaining the integrity of a pipeline system by detecting pipeline anomalies such as dents, corrosion, and cracks. When pigs become stuck inside the pipeline, it can be highly disruptive to pipeline operations and potentially cause the total shut down of the pipeline system. Fiber-optic pipeline monitoring enables pipeline operators to determine the velocity of pigs to calculate pig arrival times and inform maintenance crews. Fiber-optic detection capabilities quickly locate a stuck pig with a higher degree of accuracy than conventional methods, so you can make more informed decisions related to pigging events, enabled by remote pig monitoring. Pig monitoring can be used for routine events, such as pig arrival planning, or more critical events, such as mobilizing the appropriate personnel to remove a stuck pig by cutting into the pipeline. Continuous pipeline monitoring enables you to automate batch pigging, in which pig launcher and pig receiver systems can locate pigs at any time and adjust pressure and flow to optimize the pigging schedule.

Pipeline integrity threats—perimeter intrusion and theft detection systems

One of the main causes for pipeline failure is mechanical damage to the pipeline from external sources. This is primarily due to accidental damage caused by unintended contact with excavation equipment, followed by theft of pipeline products that are sometimes part of organized crime activities. Prevention of loss from theft or other nefarious activities using fence detection and perimeter intrusion detection systems for remote oil and gas production, pipeline, and other sensitive facilities enables more rapid and targeted responses, even with limited security and remediation staff, and saves opex related to pipeline and facility safety. Fiber-optic pipeline monitoring systems enable you to identify and characterize these threats to ensure the correct level of response is mobilized. In areas where theft is a regular event, the response can be combined with either law enforcement or military intervention to ensure the safety of pipelines, operational personnel, and the general public. Using the latest machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, SLB is able to use the collective learning from all its previous installations to enable accurate classification of pipeline intrusion threats from people walking, driving, or digging relative to the right of way to minimize false positive alarms and to help gauge the level of response required.

The SCR facility enables pipeline operators to simulate pipeline conditions to show performance of the monitoring systems in different controlled scenarios. This supports system design to meet precise requirements. The SCR facility is also used to test and refine new technology💦 to solve critical pipeline operation and integrity challenges.

The SCR facility houses more than 920 m²🔜 of laboratory space and offices for more than 100 scientists and technicians. Research focuses on drilling, chemistry, fluid mechanics, and seismic operations. In each domain, the SGR facility combines three areas of research: theory, experiment, and computational simulation. Research teams are multidisciplinary, embracing physics, chemistry, materials science, mathematics, statistics, earth sciences, solid and fluid mechanics, computer science, and instrumentation.