How do you spot a leaking oil pipeline?
Pipeline leaks, ruptures, and spills are increasingly causing property damage, according to a new study, and detection systems to detect pipeline leaks may be lacking.
Miles of pipe intended to be used in construction of the Keystone Pipeline are stacked in a field near Ripley, Okla. Leak detection technology around pipelines is not modern, scientific or technical, Schaefer writes.
Sue Ogrocki/AP/File
Do you know how most leaks are found on oil and gas pipelines?
Skip to next paragraph
offers extensive coverage of all energy sectors from crude oil and natural gas to solar energy and environmental issues. To see more opinion pieces and news analysis that cover energy technology, finance and trading, geopolitics, and sector news, please visit Oilprice.com.
Recent posts
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
They get a shrill complaint over the phone from one of the landowners where the pipeline crosses.
It’s true, says Dr. David Shaw, one of the authors of a draft “Leak Detection Study” prepared for the U.S. Department of Transportation, for a report that will go to the US Congress early in 2013. Dr. Shaw is a project engineer with independent consulting firm Kiefner & Associates, Inc., a high-end, Ohio-based consulting firm that specializes in pipeline engineering.
RECOMMENDED: Think you know energy? Take our quiz.
The Study – commissioned and funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) – analyzed several leak detection systems. What the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is to airlines, for example, PHMSA is to the pipeline industry.
“Very often pipeline operators haven’t known they have a leak until they get a phone call from somebody saying there’s oil in my field,” Dr. Shaw said in a recent interview with the Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin.
The PHMSA was first founded in 2001 as a result of several large pipeline spills, and their report only goes to Congress every few years. And now is a time when more pipelines are needed than ever before to transport the huge new supply of shale oil, and Canadian heavy oil, through the continent.
Of course, that has brought more public scrutiny to the industry than ever before—making it a high-stakes report for the industry. Surprisingly, the mainstream media has almost completely ignored the 269-page draft report, which was released in late September.
(And of course, the trade magazines don’t cover this issue because that would bite the hand the feeds them—you can’t annoy your advertisers!)
You can access the draft report here: https://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/meetings/FilGet.mtg?fil=397. The public and industry had eight weeks to comment on it. Those comments will now be worked into the final PHMSA report that goes to Congress.
Shaw says there is relatively little market penetration of automated leak detection systems. It’s still being done semi-manually, through periodic monitoring of pressure and flow by operators.
“It’s not sensitive or modern, but that’s where the majority of pipeline leak detection is,” he says. “We rely on controllers to identify something big happening on their instruments. It’s not particularly high-tech. They’re (the pipeline industry) trying to avoid these technologies. The question is why?” (Related article: Does 2013 Herald an Oil Supply Crisis?)
“We called them up and asked them. One primary reason is there’s no systematic guideline for leak detection system deployment. So one of our macro-recommendations (in the study) was to develop standards and certifications for leak detection systems.”
RECOMMENDED: Think you know energy? Take our quiz.
He added: “They (the industry) are particularly worried of regulations that will force them to have specific leak detection procedures.”
He says that pipeline leaks, ruptures, and spills are “systematically causing more and more property damage…in a bad year you can have up to $5 billion in property damages due to pipeline related accidents.”
Given the volume of public property damage, the report comments that pipeline companies would be “probably justified” in spending $490,000 a year for every 400 miles of pipeline.
He adds that the reality is that “right now companies might spend a tenth of that figure (per year for every 400 miles of pipelines). It just needs pushing along here. Somebody has got to move this technology into practise.”
Become part of the Monitor community