Research on a Safety Assessment Method for Leakage in a Heavy Oil Gathering Pipeline

Abstract

At present, the number of oil and gas gathering and transportation pipelines is numerous, and leakage accidents occur frequently. Each year, due to pipeline failure, there are immeasurable consequences for people and the environment around the affected pipelines. In order to reduce the risk of leakage accidents in heavy oil gathering pipelines and prevent the occurrence of major spills, it is of great significance to carry out safety assessments of them. However, failure data of these pipelines is seriously deficient and statistical methods used to evaluate pipeline safety are incompatible. Therefore, this paper proposes a risk assessment system for heavy oil gathering pipelines in the absence of failure data. Firstly, a Bayesian network (BN) for the leak safety evaluation of heavy oil gathering pipelines is established via mapping from a bow-tie (BT) model. Then, information diffusion theory is combined with fuzzy set theory to obtain the failure probability of each factor affecting the pipeline failure, and then the failure probability of the pipeline is obtained by the full probability formula. In addition, in order to assess the extent of consequences due to accidents, variable fuzzy set theory is used to comprehensively consider the consequences of the leakage of heavy oil gathering pipelines. Finally, the above two parts are combined to form a safety assessment system to realize risk management and control for pipelines, which is necessary to ensure the safety of heavy oil gathering pipelines.

An information entropy-based risk assessment method for multiple-media gathering pipelines

“…Given the statistics of failure accidents, fishbone diagrams, and quantitative analysis of internal corrosion failure indicators, combined with the analytic hierarchy process, a risk evaluation index system for gathering pipelines is established in terms of internal corrosion of different transportation media, as shown in Table 2 [3,4,16,17,24].…”

“…Gathering pipelines are the primary energy transmission infrastructure for upstream oil and gas fields [1]. Compared with long-distance pipelines, unrefined transport media can cause more serious internal corrosion [2][3][4]. Besides, the highly uncertain operating environment will also cause the failure of gathering pipelines, seriously affecting upstream production, environmental pollution, and even endangering life [5][6][7][8].…”

Quantitative Analysis Regarding the Incidents to the Pipelines of Petroleum Products for an Efficient Use of the Specific Transportation Infrastructure

“…In order to reduce the risk of leakage accidents and to prevent major spills, it is necessary to conduct safety assessments of heavy oil gathering pipelines. In many situations, failure data for these pipelines are insufficient or irrelevant, and the use of statistical methods is difficult, so a risk assessment system for heavy oil gathering pipelines is proposed in the absence of failure data [27]. To estimate the risk of oil pipeline failure, different risk assessment methods are used; for example, event tree analysis [28,29], fault tree analysis [28,30], bowtie [31,32], and others [28,32].…”

An information entropy-based risk assessment method for multiple-media gathering pipelines

“…Gathering pipelines are the primary energy transmission infrastructure for upstream oil and gas fields [1]. Compared with long-distance pipelines, unrefined transport media can cause more serious internal corrosion [2][3][4]. Besides, the operating environment with high uncertainties will cause the gathering pipeline failure, seriously affecting upstream production, environmental pollution, and even casualties [5][6][7][8].…”