Tracerco – World Leaders In Industrial Technology

One of the world leaders in industrial technology – Tracerco – explains how the company’s ground-breaking pipeline inspection technology Discovery™ is being deployed across the global oil and gas industry and how assets across the Gulf of Mexico are benefitting from improved operational efficiency and lower costs.

With global oil and gas operations increasingly moving into deeper waters and harsher environments, the importance of technology in making sure these assets continue to perform at peak efficiency whilst also ensuring ongoing reliability and asset extension has become critical.

Tracerco’s Discovery™ technology has been purposely designed to provide precise, granular and immediate data insights at substantial water depths and has already proved a success having been deployed by oil and gas operators across the globe.

Pioneering Technology

Recently utilised on two large scale offshore assets in the Gulf of Mexico, Discovery™ allows owner operators to gain an increased understanding of a pipeline, its coating and process fluid, all whilst remaining fully operational.

Developed with subsea CT scanning technology, - commonly used for non-invasive medical diagnostic techniques - Discovery™ provides critical flow assurance and integrity data in real time and without the need for pipeline coating removal.

Delivering critical insights regarding pipe wall thickness and pipeline contents, the Discovery™ technology has recently been used to understand pipeline corrosion and general wall loss together with riser life extension on assets across the Gulf of Mexico.

Discovery™ is being deployed across the globe including deep water projects across the UK, Europe, USA, West Africa and, very recently, South America.

The innovative technology delivers defined sizing of wall thickness in a matter of minutes, capturing high-resolution pipe wall images delivered by an external scan of the pipeline.

This tomographic image then pinpoints any defects within the pipe walls, identifies location, amount and density of any material or deposits and delivers this all within a density difference of only 0.05 g/cm3.

Rapid Deployment

Seamlessly and speedily deployed – using an ROV clamped on to the pipe – Discovery™ has been deployed across an extensive range of pipeline designs, examining internal and external corrosion, identifying blockages and establishing flow issues.

Independently verified by the Lloyd’s Register New Technology Process, Discovery™ delivers an unrivalled solution for deep water pipeline maintenance, an outcome for those pipelines that cannot be inspected by traditional means and the option when operators want to eliminate interference and production down time.

Discovery™ boasts the capability to deliver savings of up to 35% on inspection costs compared with more conventional scanning techniques.

Couple this with Tracerco’s inbuilt rapid scanning technology – decreasing overall scan time by up to 80% - and owner operators across the globe are benefitting from data capture never before available in the industry and all achieved from one single pipeline inspection.

To date, Discovery™ has collected invaluable data across tens of thousands of pipeline scans on oil and gas assets across the globe, enabling owner operators to improve the productivity and enhance the efficiency of existing pipeline models.

About Tracerco

Boasting 65 years’ experience, Tracerco is a global leader in specialised detection, diagnostic and measurement solutions.

The business provides companies all over the world with the insights they need to make informed decisions about their operations enabling owner operators to operate their assets more productively, effectively and safely.