Discover How To Get Plugged Pipelines Flowing With Tracerco
When it comes to making decisions that will have a lasting impact on operations, having all the information at your fingertips is critical.
As well as allowing you to make informed decisions, it helps build a picture of how an issue has materialised in the first instance and therefore how they can be avoided in future. All that enables you to avoid costly interference and downtime, ensuring the best results are achieved at the earliest possible opportunity.
And with more than half of remediation attempts failing first time (between 50 and 80%), and further work increasing cost and the amount of time production is halted, getting it right first time is critical. With Tracerco’s flow assurance services for subsea pipelines capable of sourcing the location, extent and nature of blockages or restrictions in subsea pipelines without interrupting or halting production completely, the benefits are clear to see.
Said benefits were demonstrated in a project in the Gulf of Mexico when a pipeline became plugged on start-up. Despite several attempts, the operator was unable to remediate the line, suggesting more information on the location, size and nature of the blockage was required to resolve the situation.
With more than 65 years’ experience in delivering innovative technologies and helping customers make informed decisions, Tracerco was able to conduct an inspection campaign to locate and measure the size of the deposit and fully characterise the type of blockage.
Through non-intrusive inspection with their Explorer™ tool, the Tracerco team was tasked with measuring the mean density of the pipeline contents, ultimately discovering three areas of significantly elevated density.
This led to the deployment of the Discovery™ CT scanner to evaluate the highlighted location in detail, fully characterise the blockage, allowing the operator to plan an effective remediation campaign that is right first time.
Through using Discovery™, the operator was able to ascertain the material was asphaltene, as opposed to hydrate, while gas pockets were also observed in the asphaltene in first two locations closest to the platform, with the third location being a total blockage.
Gas communication was confirmed through the first two areas of deposit by measuring the initial gas density with Discovery™ and then increasing the gas pressure from the host platform end and repeating the scans. An increase in gas density, proportional to the increase in pressure, was observed at all but the last location confirming gas communication up to the last region of high density, which was a complete blockage.
As well as being able to obtain the required information regarding the location, size and nature of the blockage in this instance, the operator was also able to make an informed critical decision to formulate an appropriate remediation plan, with the aim of returning it back to full service.
Further than that, the client also decided to investigate the possibility of using Discovery™ to determine the success of the remediation campaign, prior to the production line coming back online. The project was deemed so successful that through the deployment of Discovery™, in “just 10 minutes of scanning” the operator was able to see “more about the condition of this pipeline than… from all of my modelling over the last two years.”
Being able to screen several kilometres of pipeline rapidly, identifying blockage locations with precision, Explorer™ and Discovery™ are just two of the technologies in the Tracerco toolkit that can not only help solve problems – but help avoid further issues from occurring.
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