Advancements and future outlook of safety monitoring, inspection and assessment technologies for oil and gas pipeline networks
Pengchao Chen
Abstract
The expansion of high-grade steel, large-diameter, and high-pressure pipelines, along with the integration of new energy and unconventional media into oil and gas pipeline networks, poses significant safety challenges. It’s urgent to address the technical limitations of current pipeline monitoring, inspection, and fitness-for-service (FFS) assessment methods. The development status, recent advancements, and future key research directions of related technologies globally were summarized across three aspects: pipeline body inspection, environmental monitoring of pipeline routes, and FFS assessment. Pipeline body inspection includes in-line inspection and external inspection. Environmental monitoring of pipeline routes covers leakage and geohazard monitoring. FFS focuses on assessing dents, buckling, metal loss, cracking, and weld defects. Pipeline body inspection primarily focuses on developing high-precision sensors, multi-sensor fusion algorithms, and integrated in-line inspection tools, yielding achievements such as micro-defect array integrated sensors, multi-source data fusion analysis algorithms, and multi-physical field magnetoelectric composite ultra-high-resolution integrated in-line inspection tools. Environmental monitoring of pipeline routes concentrates on weak signal detection, characteristic signal extraction, and accurate threat event identification, leading to technologies such as high-precision liquid pipeline leakage monitoring integrated with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, optical fiber sensing of threat events, and multi-dimensional geohazard monitoring. FFS assessment emphasizes signal feature identification, determination, and grading evaluation, yielding results such as strain-based dent integrity assessments and Bayesian growth predictions for internal and external corrosion defects. This paper identifies key research directions for the future monitoring, inspection, and FFS assessment of oil and gas pipeline networks and provide guidance for further researches in related fields.