Engineers listening for pipeline leaks via phone line
26 Nov 2012
Farnborough, UK - Pipeline and maintenance engineers are at the forefront of a battle to prevent oil theft and breaches of pipelines costing the process industries billions of pounds in lost revenue every year.
The focus of technology developments in this area is shift from leak detection to the prevention to such incidents, including alarms on the events that precede a pipeline leak.
Among the players most active in this area is OptaSense, which claims to be a world leader in the distributed acoustic sensing technology. Tapping into decades of signal-processing expertise, the Farnborough-based company is able to turn standard telecoms fibre into a listening devices of up to 50km long.
As well as the BP-BTC pipeline in Turkey and Mangala Development pipeline in India, OptaSense, a QinetiQ company, has recently won a contract to protect a new 180km pipeline corridor, owned and run by the State Company for Oil Project Iraq (SCOP).
For SCOP, OptaSense will provide technology to allow vital operational and security data to help operate, protect and secure the pipeline along both sides of a 60 meters wide pipeline corridor.
When complete the pipeline corridor will be protected by over 20,000 virtual microphones making it one of the most monitored assets in the region.
Any activity in and around the pipeline corridor will be ‘heard’ whether these be footsteps, digging or vehicles. The acoustic alert data will be used to inform and guide the correct response to maintain pipeline integrity.
The project, due to be completed in March 2013, will complement work already taking place in Oman, Qatar and elsewhere in Iraq. The project will be managed from OptaSense regional HQ in Dubai.
OptaSense will, for the first time, be providing a secure corridor, between which multiple pipelines will be built, according to Magnus McEwen-King, MD for OptaSense said:
“We already have a proven track record of providing pipeline security elsewhere in the Middle East and around the world,” he said. “This technology will provide a cost-effective means of protecting vital Iraqi infrastructure.”
Earlier this year, Shell signed a deal to use OptaSense’s distributed acoustic sensing system as part of an hydraulic fracture (fracking) monitoring service – jointly developed by the two companies under a 2010 collaboration agreement.
This is to provide real-time monitoring of fracture fluid injection locations and estimate the volume of water and proppant uptake at these locations. The aim is to help Shell optimise it fracking processes in tight sands and shale gas wells.
