The Role of Effective Collaboration in the Advancement of EMAT Inline Inspection Technology for Pipeline Integrity Management: A Case Study

Abstract

Over the past three years there has been increasing industry interest and profile regarding the role and pipeline integrity management potential of EMAT crack inspection technology in the Oil & Gas pipeline industry. This paper outlines the stages and results of the effective collaboration of a major pipeline operator and a service company to advance the true predictive performance of the EMATScan Gen III crack inspection technology. The paper will also summarize and provide examples of lessons-learned from this collaboration across all stages of EMAT based SCC integrity management program. The paper will similarly outline ongoing work in progress regarding the assessment of the ILI data relative to hydro-testing equivalency, detection of injurious defects and the related analysis and reporting improvements made over the past three years.

Literature Review: Theory and Application of In-Line Inspection Technologies for Oil and Gas Pipeline Girth Weld Defection

“…Now, this technology has been proved to be effective to detect the stress corrosion crack and longitudinal weld crack of gas pipelines [ 66 , 67 , 68 ]. GE PII and Rosen have developed the mature in-line inspection equipment [ 69 , 70 ], and some Chinese universities have been engaging in studies on the technology and equipment of EMAT inspection for pipeline defect, including Tianjin University [ 71 ], Shenyang University of Technology [ 72 , 73 ], Beijing University of Chemical Technology [ 74 ] and Tsinghua University [ 63 ].…”