This week’s Pipeliners Podcast episode features first-time guest Simon Slater of ROSEN discussing the importance of materials properties verification (MPV) as part of a pipeline operator’s Integrity Management (IM) program.

In this episode, you will learn about how MPV fits into the three-legged stool of supporting an operator’s overall IM program, how the manufacturing of pipe has advanced over time, how to determine defects and related issues that affect the integrity of pipe, how to achieve the standard for obtaining traceable, verifiable, and complete (TVC) pipeline records, how to use data in a cost-effective manner to verify the property of pipeline already in the ground, and more important topics to support your operation’s IM program.

Materials Properties Verification: Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Simon Slater is a Principal Engineer for ROSEN Group. Connect with Simon on LinkedIn.
  • ROSEN is the current episode sponsor of the Pipeliners Podcast. Learn more about ROSEN — the global leader in cutting-edge solutions across all areas of the integrity process chain.
• Materials Property Verification (MPV) is the process of identifying the fundamental make-up — or DNA — of a piece of pipe based on existing information such as as-built drawings, pipe books, mill certificates, hydro test pressure records, etc.
  • ROSEN offers a Material Property Verification solution that closes the gap on unknown material information and provides a detailed picture of the pipeline’s DNA.
• Integrity Management (IM) (Pipeline Integrity Management) is a systematic approach to operate and manage pipelines in a safe manner that complies with PHMSA regulations.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) ensures the safe transportation of energy and hazardous materials.
  • CFR 192 and 195 provide regulatory guidance on the pipeline transport of natural gas and hazardous liquids, respectively.
    • 192.712 requires operators of onshore steel transmission pipelines to analyze anomalies or defects to determine the predicted failure pressure at the location of the anomaly or defect, and the remaining life of the pipeline segment at the location of the anomaly or defect.
• Defects are defined by PHMSA as a deviation from the original configuration of the pipeline. This could be a change in wall thickness due to metal loss, a deformation of the pipe wall, or a crack.
  • Corrosion in pipeline inspection refers to a type of metal loss anomaly that could indicate the deterioration of a pipe. Inline inspection techniques are used to evaluate the severity of corrosion.
  • Cracks in pipeline inspection refer to breaks, splits, flaws, or deformities in the surface of a pipe. Inline inspection tools are often used to evaluate the severity of the crack.
  • Hard Spots are local changes in the hardness of the steel composition of pipe. When under a significant amount of stress, hard spots can fail due to stress cracking.
  • Circumferential Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) occurs when external pressure on the pipe and the peak stress along the pipe is in an axial position.
    • Read more on the ROSEN website.
  • CTOD (Crack Tip Opening Displacement) is a widely-accepted fracture toughness parameter that characterizes the fracture toughness of certain steel used in pipelines.
• Girth Welds join two pipes along the circumference to enhance the viability of the pipes when placed into the field. Girth welds are helpful reference points to detect the location of an anomaly in the pipe.
  • PHMSA issued a safety notice on line pipe strength in 2009, “Pipeline Safety: Potential Low and Variable Yield and Tensile Strength and Chemical Composition Properties in High Strength Line Pipe.” It notified pipeline system owners and operators of the potential for high grade line pipe to exhibit inconsistent chemical  and mechanical properties.
    • Another safety notice was issued on girth welds in 2010, “Pipeline Safety: Girth Weld Quality Issues Due to Improper Transitioning, Misalignment, and Welding Practices of Large Diameter Line Pipe.” The advisory bulletin was issued to notify owners and operators of recently-constructed large diameter natural gas pipeline and hazardous liquid pipeline systems of the potential for girth weld failures due to welding quality issues.
• Bending Strain is a determination of the amount of stress that a stretch of pipeline is under due to its composition, geographical forces, and installation.
• NDT (non-destructive testing) is a group of noninvasive analysis techniques to determine the integrity of a material component or structure, without the need to take apart or destroy the test object. NDT includes several different types of tests and techniques to perform the assessment.
  • Ultrasonic Testing (UT) is a type of NDT technique based on the propagation of ultrasonic waves in a tested object or material.
    • PA UT (Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing) is an advanced UT testing method that can generate multiple ultrasound beams to improve flaw detection and speed up inspections.
• ILI (Inline Inspection) is a method to assess the integrity and condition of a pipe by determining the existence of cracks, deformities, or other structural issues that could cause a leak.
  • Crack detection in-line inspection includes ultrasound and electro-magnetic acoustic transducer methods to identify various types of cracks in a pipeline.
• TVC (Traceable Verifiable Complete) is the ability to capture the life of a pipeline from its origins through its development and specification to its subsequent deployment and use to periods of ongoing refinement and repairs.
  • 192.607 (Verification of Pipeline Material Properties and Attributes) is the requirement for pipeline operators to document and verify material properties and attributes of their pipe. Records must document physical pipeline characteristics and attributes, including diameter, wall thickness, seam type, and grade (e.g., yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, or pressure rating for valves and flanges, etc.). The records must be maintained for the life of the pipeline and be traceable, verifiable, and complete.
• Class location is an onshore area that extends 220 yards on either side of any continuous 1 mile of pipeline. Also, each unit in a multi-unit building is counted as a separate building. [View this detailed presentation on how to determine class location.]
  • Class 1: Offshore, or has 10 or fewer buildings for human occupancy (e.g., rural).
  • Class 2: More than 10 buildings, but less than 46.
  • Class 3: More than 46 buildings; or an area where the pipeline lies within 100 yards of a place where people gather (20 or more people, at least 5 days a week for 10 weeks in any 12 month period).
  • Class 4: Buildings with 4 or more stories above ground are prevalent.
• HCA (High-Consequence Areas) are defined by PHMSA as a potential impact zone that contains 20 or more structures intended for human occupancy or an identified site. PHMSA identifies how pipeline operators must identify, prioritize, assess, evaluate, repair, and validate the integrity of gas transmission pipelines that could, in the event of a leak or failure, affect HCAs.
• MAOP (maximum allowable operating pressure) was included in a bulletin issued by PHSMA informing owners and operators of gas transmission pipelines that if the pipeline pressure exceeds MAOP plus the build-up allowed for operation of pressure-limiting or control devices, the owner or operator must report the exceedance to PHMSA on or before the fifth day following the date on which the exceedance occurs. If the pipeline is subject to the regulatory authority of one of PHMSA’s State Pipeline Safety Partners, the exceedance must also be reported to the applicable state agency.
• SMYS (Specified Minimum Yield Strength) is a measurement of a pipe’s strength, as determined by the manufacturing specifications of the pipe.
• YS (Yield Strength) is the material yield strength for steel pipe or weld.
• TS (Tensile Strength) is the material tensile strength for steel pipe or weld.
  • UTS (Ultimate Tensile Strength) is the maximum stress that pipe can withstand while being stretched or pulled before experiencing a defect.
• Barlow’s Equation captures the internal pressure that a piece of pipe can withstand based on its dimensions, composition, and strength of its materials. The formula is P= (2*T*S/D).
  • P = pressure
  • S = allowable stress
  • t = wall thickness
  • D = outside diameter
• Bell hole is a hole dug into the ground near a pipeline to allow for inspection to be performed. This is a technique used to widen a trench over a planned distance to allow for enough room for workers to perform the inspection.
• Populations are groups of pipelines that are characterized by similar diameter, wall thickness, strength, and pipe length.
  • ROSEN offers the RoMat PGS in-line high-resolution service to provide unique information about an entire population of pipe, ensuring traceable, verifiable, complete, and reliable pipe records.
  • Download Simon Slater’s presentation on their integrity management service that allows for the efficient completion of pipeline records.
• Pigging refers to using devices known as “pigs” to perform maintenance operations. This tool associated with inline pipeline inspection has now become known as a Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG).
  • Non-piggable pipeline is a portion of pipe that cannot accommodate a pig device, making it more difficult to inspect for defects. A pipeline may be non-piggable because of extreme bends, its composition, or changes in diameter.
• Composite Repair is a non-metallic repair used for pipelines. When designed and installed correctly, the repair can restore a pipeline’s structural integrity to a performance level that is oftentimes equal to the original condition of the pipe.
  • Type B welded sleeves are defined by PHMSA as being used to contain a leak or to reinforce an area where a defect exists. The Type B sleeve is similar to the Type A except the sleeve is completely welded to the pipe.
    • Type A sleeves are used to reinforce the area where a defect exists. The defect cannot be a through wall defect. The Type A sleeve is a full encirclement of the pipe. The sleeve halves are normally welded together while the sleeve ends are not.
• ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) develops codes and standards for industrial use to create a safer world. ASME has been defining piping safety since 1922.
  • ASME B31.8S (Managing System Integrity of Gas Pipelines) is an industry standard specifically designed to provide operators with the necessary information to develop and implement an effective integrity management program utilizing proven industry practices and processes.

Materials Properties Verification: Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:  Welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast, episode 190, sponsored by ROSEN, the global leader in cutting-edge solutions across all areas of the integrity process chain, providing operators the data they need to make the best Integrity Management decisions. Find out more about ROSEN at ROSEN-Group.com.

[background music]

Announcer:  The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, Bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. Now, your host, Russel Treat.

Russel:  Thanks for listening to the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time, and to show that appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener each episode.

This week, our winner is Cameron Brown with Diversified Energy. Congratulations, Cameron. Your YETI is on its way. To learn how you could win this signature prize, stick around until the end of the episode.

This week, Simon Slater, Principal Engineer for Integrity Solutions with ROSEN, is joining us to talk about materials property verification as used in Integrity Management. Simon, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Simon Slater:  Hi, Russel. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for having me on.

Russel:  Like I was telling you earlier, you’re the second of the ROSEN Integrity Management SMEs to come on the podcast, so I think it’s time to throw down the gauntlet and tell your team members that they’re going to have to up their game.

Simon:  Yeah, for sure. I’m number one.

[laughter]

Russel:  I love confidence. That’s awesome. Look, why don’t we start? If you could, just tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into Integrity Management.

Simon:  Sure. As you can tell from my accent, I’m not from the U.S. I’m from the U.K. Straight out of university, I joined British Steel, so I started off in the steel industry from day one, if you like. I was involved for five years on research and development to do with steel structures and structural integrity.

I got involved in pipelines through that. In getting involved in pipelines, the company I worked for — British Steel, as it was then — had a pipe mill in the U.K. I went up and started to work in the pipe mill in a technical capacity.

I was technical lead, looking at the material properties, making sure the pipes met specification, how to develop new pipes, new feed stock, things like that. I also did a little stint in the pipe mill as well, so I got my hands dirty making pipes with the production facility, which was definitely a little bit different from sitting around in an office looking at material certificates, and trying to figure out what chemistry I needed to meet X70 pipeline grade.

That was real good experience. Through being involved in pipelines, I then joined ROSEN within the U.K. as a materials and welding consultant up in Newcastle in the U.K. I worked there for a number of years, and I was getting involved in a lot of the U.S. projects and a lot of this material property verification thing.

Christopher De Leon, my boss, invited me over to the U.S. to work, and I jumped at the chance. I’ve been here for three years now, focusing on material properties, but also doing bits of other things, like hard spots, cracks, and things like that.

Russel:  Interesting. That explains how you caught the whole MPV disease.

Simon:  Yeah, the disease. I like it. [laughs] The scratch you can’t itch.

Russel:  Yeah, right. I think it’s interesting. To my mind, at least in terms of the people I’ve talked to doing this podcast, your background’s a little unique from a lot of the other folks I’ve talked to, because you came up actually designing and manufacturing steel.

That’s very much, I would think, about understanding what are the properties I need to build in from a design perspective. Then, when I manufacture it, how do I make sure that the output product actually is conforming to those properties that I designed in?

Simon:  Yeah, for sure. If we think about it, pipeline, it’s a steel tube. Most of the time, it’s got a well down the middle, but there’s a lot more to it than that. To get our properties, we have to think about what feed stock we’re using. That goes all the way back to steelmaking. What chemistry are you using? What production facilities are you using?

Russel:  I would think it even goes all the way back to the mine you’re getting the original ore from to start. That’s a big part of it as well.

Simon:  Absolutely. We think about way back, when we were using different types of steels than we are now, where we perhaps called them dirty steels, where they had a lot of impurities, inclusions, and things like that, we don’t have that nowadays because of the progress we’ve made in steelmaking.

Then also, how we then follow that quality control through the manufacturing of strip and plate to make pipes and billets. It does go all the way back, and my background is in that. It goes from the start right to the finish.

Then, like you say, when you’re actually making pipes or components, whichever, it’s all about quality control. You set up standard processes that we follow day in, day out, and it’s just a matter of maintaining those standard processes so that you get the same output all the time.

Russel:  Sounds easy if you say it fast.

Simon:  [laughs] You’re right. That’s why we have NDT, and that’s why we have all these other quality checks. You’re absolutely right.

Russel:  Right. Yeah, no, exactly. In the industry, what’s driving the need for MPV as a part of an Integrity Management program?

Simon:  That’s a real good question. I think there’s obvious pointers and incidents that have involved pipe that maybe haven’t got the level of documentation or quality control. We call them rogue pipes and things like that.

Things that have found their way into the system that we don’t want to be in there. That’s definitely part of it. It’s also that reinforcement, if you like. I say reinforcement, because it did exist before we went down this route of the new regulation changes that you need material properties to manage your integrity properly.

We think about, I’ve used this before, the three-legged stool. We can find out what operating conditions our pipe’s working under. We can find out what defects or what problems we have in the pipe with detection capabilities, ILI or NDT.

You also need the material properties to be able to identify what you do with the pipeline and what pressure can it withstand, what size corrosion feature can it withstand, what size cracks can it withstand. If you haven’t got those material properties, then any decision you make is going to be questionable.

It makes perfect sense that we’re going down this route, as I say. If I’m making decisions on my integrity using material properties, I have to make sure those material properties are justifiable in some way. It’s always been there.

It’s not like this is a totally new thing. In ASME B31.8S, and in the regulations, even very early on in the regulations — I’m talking about gas regulations — it infers there and talks about the fact that you need to use material properties that are reliable. I think now, just everyone’s sharpened their pencil a little bit and realizing that we’ve got to do a little bit more, and we’re pushed to do it.

Russel:  I think also, one of the things that’s driving it — and it’s driving a lot of things — is our ability to deal with very large datasets is getting better. 30 years ago, if I wanted to keep all the records that we’re required to keep today, I’d fill up a building with the paper, right?

Simon:  [laughs] Yes.

Russel:  It really wasn’t feasible. Our processes and our processes just dealt with that reality, and we made some generalizing assumptions that worked. When you do that, and you’re an engineer, you apply a safety factor, and that means additional cost because I overengineer to compensate for the lack of something else.

Simon:  Yeah, for sure, and that data management thing is a huge part of this. We relied back in the day on handwritten records, and now, we’re trying to digitize all those and put those into forms we can…The whole thing, and I don’t know whether we’re going to go on and discuss this, but this whole thing of data management.

The whole thing of saying, “Where do I start from?” I’m not just starting from nothing. I’ve got things. I’ve got some records. I’ve got some knowledge, but how do I establish my foundation?

Russel:  Right, and how do I do that in a way that is useful? It’s one thing to just have the records. It’s another thing to have those records in a way that they provide some value, right?

Simon:  Yeah, and you can interrogate them, and you can make decisions based on those records. That’s all about really doing that data crawl and trying to find out what records you’ve got. I’ll use the word now — I’m sure we’re going to get onto it — TVC, traceable, verifiable, and complete.

Looking at your records, which ones are TVC and which aren’t? Where do they belong on the pipeline? Don’t throw away the non-TVC ones, because the opportunity is to use other technologies to make those TVC. They may not be TVC now, but you can certainly try and make them TVC.

Russel:  I certainly think that, over time, as we learn more, there’s a lot of records we have now that they’re going to become part of the Integrity Management program in the future as we understand how to get those records digitized, integrated, and all that.

What kind of specific data do I need to do MPV?

Simon:  In terms of specific data, what we’re looking for is obviously the best thing you can have is construction records. Construction records are well documented to say…It goes as far back as a bill of materials or a design document.

You might say, “I’ve got a design document that says I’m going to build this segment of pipeline, and to do it, I’m going to use this bill of materials.” Then you obviously need some kind of construction records to say, “These are what went into the pipeline.”

On those construction records, you’re hoping that on there, it refers to a work order, or a heat number, or a material certificate. Then, the hope is that you’ve also got that document as well, and that would be something considered TVC.

You’ve got a work order. You’ve got a material certificate. You know that it goes to that part of the pipeline. In some cases, we won’t have all of that. We might have a couple of bits of it, or we might just have one of them.

Sometimes, you find you’ve got a bill of materials, which signifies that the operator said, “I’m going to order these materials,” but how do we know they were the materials that went under the ground? Then you’re trying to say, “Okay, what do I need?”

In some cases, you’ve got bits of information, and sometimes, you’ve got none. Then, if you’ve got none, or you’ve got bits of materials, then we’re talking about looking at this new regulation language about going out and verifying material properties, and finding out what grade, wall, thickness, diameter, and seam type you’ve got, and if needed, toughness.

You’re hoping that that information can be linked to your pipeline from your documentation. If not, you need to go and collect that information.

Russel:  You’re either going to get there via documents you have, or you’re going to get there via some kind of inspection that you perform to gather that information.

Simon:  Absolutely right, Russel. Yeah, absolutely right.

Russel:  Fundamentally, it’s grade of steel, wall thickness…

Simon:  Grade of steel, wall thickness, diameter, seam type, and toughness, if you need it.

Russel:  Tell me, in this context, what is toughness?

Simon:  Toughness we’re talking about, it’s singled out as a separate entity, if you like, because we tend to use toughness to consider the severity of crack-like features.

The other ones, if we think about seam type, grade, wall thickness, and diameter, they’re all involved in us — I don’t want to call it standard Integrity Management — but they’re all involved in Barlow’s equation for maintaining pressure. They’re all involved in that part of things.

When we’re talking about safe working operating pressures, when we’re talking about corrosion features, when we’re talking about dents, and the things that we’re perhaps more commonly dealing with, then those four parameters are enough. When you’re dealing with cracks, you also need to know about the toughness.

Russel:  Let’s unpack that a little bit, because I know cracks, at least… [laughs] Whenever I talk to somebody who’s an Integrity Management expert, I’m always afraid I’m revealing the level of my ignorance in this domain, because my ignorance in this domain’s pretty immense. I do know enough to know that cracks seem to be an active topic of conversation at the moment.

My engineering degree is actually civil structural, so deep in the recesses of my brain, that got etched in, but it takes a while to surface it, because I’ve worked in software for the last 30 years and instrumentation control, not in metals and materials.

As I understand or as I recall, toughness goes to how bendable is the pipe versus how likely is the pipe to break. That’s probably an oversimplification, like a lot of things, but that’s kind of what you’re talking about. It’s like if I have a paperclip, and if it’s tough, I bend it once or twice, and it breaks. If it’s not tough, I bend it a bunch of times before it breaks.

Simon:  Wow. I’ve never heard anyone else use that analogy, because I used to use it a little bit. That whole thing about it, if you bend a paperclip, eventually it breaks. Now, there’s something going on deep down of why that breaks, and I won’t go into that here.

Russel:  Right, there’s more to it than just toughness.

Simon:  It’s all about dislocation and things like that, but without going too far into the detail, think of it as two things. The first and most simplistic way to describe is inductility. You’re talking a little bit about ductility there, where something is easily — to use your words — bendable. It can be deformed. It’s got some plasticity to it.

Russel:  More accurately, it can be reformed.

Simon:  It can be plastically deformed, and it won’t break. Whereas something that is brittle, as soon as you try and bend it, it will snap essentially. Think of it as something like a piece of lead or a piece of glass. They’re the two extremes of ductile and brittle.

Russel:  I’m trying to track with what you’re saying, but when you think about toughness, the benefit of toughness is it adds strength. When I’m putting in a compression, it tends to be stronger. The benefit of ductility is, if I have bending strains, it tends to move those around in the pipe better.

Simon:  In that context, yeah, the ductility and the brittleness make sense. Yeah, I see what you’re getting at. When I talk about toughness here, I think what we’re talking about more is the tolerance to defects and the tolerance to crack-like features. That’s where toughness plays a part as it’s within regulation. That’s what we’re talking about.

When we measure things like a sharpie value or an actual fracture toughness value, like CTOD or K or J, what we’re actually talking about there is defect tolerance.

What it actually means is, if I was to have a crack-like feature that was 50 percent deep within a pipe wall, if I’ve got a higher toughness, there’s more chance that that is tolerable. If I’ve got a low toughness pipe, then that will lead to failure.

When we talk about toughness within this context, that’s what we mean. A very low toughness pipe, you could only have a very small feature, and it would be a real problem. In a very high toughness material, you could tolerate a much larger defect.

Back in the day, we weren’t making high toughness pipes like we are now. 10 foot pounds sharpie was the norm once. If you get a modern X70 pipe now, you’re talking about 300 joules, which is probably above 200 foot pounds, easy.

We’ve come a long way, and we’ve got to consider that we have pipe body cracks and weld cracks, and they’re different. The properties are different, but that’s what we mean by toughness in that context.

Russel:  That’s really helpful, Simon, to build some understanding about that. I think it also clarifies why materials properties is becoming more of an issue, because there’s a broader range of materials that are out there.

Consequently, that means that there’s a broader range of…I guess, there’s more complexity in analyzing the consequence, the probability of failure, around a defect.

Simon:  Yeah, I guess so. If we think about it, we tend to do focus on vintage pipes and how we collect material properties for vintage pipes that are already in the ground. We’ve got to think about more of our modern things as well.

The regulation certainly says there that we need to retain all our records from this point forward. It’s not that we’re going back and retrospectively dealing with everything, and forgetting about what we’re doing now and in the future. That’s not the point.

I think your point is, as things develop and get better, then obviously, the tolerance is a little bit better. We can take a little bit more. It does become a little bit more difficult to deal with. If you take a very low toughness pipe from the 1940s, and you’ve got defects in the weld, there’s a high chance that, no matter what size they are, you’re going to have to deal with them. [laughs]

Whereas for a more modern pipe which has got a higher toughness, if you’ve got defects in the weld, there’s a chance that you can retain some of them in the pipeline for a certain period of time. They’ll sit there happily. You can tolerate them and go and reinspect them in five years, that kind of thing.

I guess as you improve, that operating envelope expands a little bit. Therefore, we’re trying to work with something that is a little bit different than the old vintage pipes.

Russel:  This is actually a good conversation because it’s teeing up what I wanted to get into next. That is how does a material’s property relate to your overall IM program. You already talked about the three-legged stool. Go through that for me again. What are the three legs of the stool for, properties being one, and then what are the other two?

Simon:  In relation to Integrity Management, the reason I use that three-legged stool thing is, if you think about it, you’ve got this steel structure. That steel structure is operating within some kind of operating conditions. It’s got a load on it.

Most of the time with pipeline, we’re talking about the internal pressure load, essentially, wanting to pop out of the pipe. You’ve got a pressure that’s being withheld inside the pipe. We can work that out. We’re engineers. We can work out what the stress is in a pipe wall because of that pressure inside the pipe.

If you apply a bending strain, we can work out what that bending strain is. Whatever operating conditions, if we’ve got fatigue loading, we can analyze that. If we’re working in a liquid line, where we’re compressing liquid, and obviously, your loading, your pressure is going up and down.

We can define a fatigue spectrum, if you like, or a cyclic loading spectrum. We can do that. Then we’ve got the fact that no steel structure is free of defects. When I say free of defects, nothing’s perfect. We make pipes that aren’t perfect to start with, and we certainly did in the past.

Then, as we operate them, they deteriorate. We get corrosion, and we lose a little bit of wall thickness. We can use techniques to identify what that is. We can use ILI. We can do non-destructive testing, phased array to look for cracks, all this good stuff.

We can actually characterize what kind of defects are threatening our pipeline. We’ve got operating conditions. We’ve got what kinds of defects threaten our line. The other one is, then, well, what do I need to know about the pipe? That tells me whether that pipeline is suitable for the current service in those operating conditions and with those defects in.

If that is an empty box, if you like, then how can I make realistic decisions on whether the defects I find or the problems I’ve got are suitable under the operating conditions? Take away one leg, and it falls down on the floor, or the pipe to be on our head.

[laughter]

Russel:  Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, because this is…Again, I’ll say it again. When I’m doing these Integrity Management conversations, I’m always very steep on the learning curve, so I get a little muddled in my thinking sometimes, because I’m trying to relate it the other conversations I’ve had.

What I think’s interesting about this is I think where we’re getting to is the tools are getting better. They’re capturing more information. We have a greater variety of tools that we can use to look for specific kinds of things.

We’re getting more data about what defects are there. We’re getting more data about operating conditions. People are talking about big data, and people are looking at some of the pressure information that people are looking. It’s very high-resolution pressure.

I can see how pipe is cycling and all kinds of stuff. Those two things are awesome, but if you don’t know what you actually have in the ground, it doesn’t matter.

Simon:  It doesn’t matter, yeah. It’s a missing link, is it? Totally.

Russel:  I would also say this — and I mean this as a question — is that if I have a little bit of data, and that becomes the weakest leg of the stool.

Simon:  Yeah, and it’s about maybe taping up and using complementary technology, complementary techniques, complementary knowledge to try and prop that up properly. I’m not saying we’re trying to put sticky plasters on anything, but we can’t just fix everything overnight. We’ve got to build ourselves up, and there’s big data.

You picked up on something that’s really interesting there. You’re right, in terms of operating conditions, we are learning more about how our pipes are loaded, etc. Think about how we understand a lot more now about bending strain, of pipe movement, all these kinds of things. Talk about ILI, NDT, and understanding what defects we’ve got, we’re now looking for hard spots. We’re looking for circumferential cracking, things that.

We are getting much more information about our pipelines, about those two, and so it makes sense. Let’s get more information about material properties. That big data thing is interesting, because lots of operators have pipelines, and there’s thousands and thousands of miles of pipe, and some of it is the same.

As we build data and learn about it, we should be using that data from the industry, if you like, to say, “Okay, we know that if pipe was made in this vintage, and we know it was made by this person, we know this is what the properties are going to be like. Let’s lean on that a little bit as well, so down the road, hopefully, we can all share data…”

Russel:  What you’re saying is, even if I don’t have data, I can make some reasonable assumptions if I know what other people were doing at the same time.

Simon:  Yeah, and that’s a fantastic point. I don’t want to go into the detail of the regulation, but there is a clause within the gas regulations that talks about that. If I don’t have the properties, what can I use? The clause is 192.712, and it talks about conservative estimates you could use.

There’s a real interesting, one of the clauses in particular says you could use a conservative lower bound, based on knowledge about the pipeline you have. That opens that up, that ability to say, “Well, at least I know what pipe, when it was constructed, who it was made by. I might not know every single detail, but at least I can start to build up some theory about what it could be.”

Then it’s about justifying that as you go through your material property verification process. I’m going to start using this, and I’m going to prove it up as I collect data.

Russel:  That’s, again, a great segue. How would somebody…I’m ACME Pipelines, and I have just acquired a new pipeline. It has virtually no records. Where do I start?

Simon:  Wow, where do you start? [laughs]

Russel:  It’s not like that never happens, Simon.

Simon:  No, you’ve got no records whatsoever.

Russel:  Well, very limited, maybe.

Simon:  Very limited. Let’s just say very limited. I guess, the important thing is to start with plans and setting up a strategy of what you’re trying to do. I think a big part of that would be understanding the pipeline. You might go down the process of saying, “Okay, I’ve got this segment of pipeline that I’ve got no records of.”

First of all, you want to look at, “Okay, what class locations have I got? Where are my HCAs? Where are my class threes? Where are my class fours? Which parts of regulation apply to the different segments of my pipeline? Do I have some segments that don’t have pressure tests, and I’m going to need to do MAOP verification?”

Plan it out like that. Here’s what I need where. Then you take what records you do have, and you link them to those locations and say, “Oh, it just so happens in that area, where it’s a class three, I actually do have records,” or “Here’s a class four location where I don’t have records,” so that becomes your priority. Plan it out like that.

Then, you’ve got to go down the difficult process of saying, “Okay, I don’t know what I’ve got in the ground. I might have some construction dates. How can I split this up into a manageable task?” Don’t eat the elephant at once. Split it up into little things, little parts.

You might say, “Okay, I’m going to deal with this part first, then I’ll deal with that part. What populations do I think I’ve got in this area that I’m looking at?” Then, you might say, “What can I use to help define what populations?” Hopefully, operators will have some form of ILI on the pipeline. Non-piggable lines is something we’re going to talk about, and obviously, equally is a concern.

If you’ve got a piggable pipeline, you could use ILI data to help you define populations. You could use records. We all do corrosion ILI if it’s a piggable line most of the time. That tells you what wall thickness you’ve got, what diameters you’ve got.

It’s a process of gradually, gradually building up your plan of what you want to do, and then digging into detail. Then, we get down to the route of saying, “Okay, here’s where I need my material properties. Here’s where I need to collect data.”

Then you’re looking at, “Okay, when will I have the opportunity to collect that data? When will I have an excavation open where I can go and use some techniques to go and find that data?” That’s the NDT part of material properties verification.

Russel:  When we were talking about this off-mic, you mentioned the one per mile digging requirement. Can you talk about that a little bit? What is that?

Simon:  That’s in regulation, and what that is pertaining to is where you’ve got a segment that you’ve got no material properties for. Let’s just say it was the whole pipeline, 20 miles of the pipeline. A 20-mile pipeline that you need to collect material properties down the whole of that 20-mile segment. What it’s saying is, first, define your populations. I previously threw out that word “populations.” Maybe, I should just define that. A population is a group of something that all has the same characteristics.

When we talk about population as it pertains to pipes, we’re saying a group of pipes that have the same wall thickness, diameter, grade, seam type. They were all made at the same time by a company and put in the ground.

Russel:  Basically, if I have a 20-mile pipe, and I know that pipe was all built at the same time, and it all came from the same manufacturer and the same run…

Simon:  It’s all one population.

Russel:  It’s one population, right.

Simon:  Correct. If you built that in 1950, and then in 1970, you took out a two-mile segment and replaced it with some different pipe, then that becomes another pipeline. Then it says define your populations. Then it says, once you’ve defined your populations, then go and dig one per mile within those populations opportunistically.

When you open up a bell hole in one of those populations, go and check some material properties. If it’s an 18-mile segment, you need to do that 18 times, because you have to do one per mile. You’re going to collect that.

Doing that, what the regulators are stimulating us to do is to collect enough data so that our properties are now, if you like, TVC robust, and they can be used for Integrity Management. That one per mile is a difficult thing, because it’s a big task. It’s a big task doing that.

Russel:  Well, it’s expensive. [laughs] It’s really expensive. Digs are not cheap.

Simon:  No, digs aren’t cheap, and it’s all about making the most of your data. The important thing is because doing that one per mile might give you the information you’ve got, but that’s really based on how well your populations are developed to begin with.

Russel:  And understood.

Simon:  And understood, exactly, because you need to be able to prove that each of those digs that you did come from the same population. Otherwise, you’re tainting your data. One of the 18 might be from a totally different population, a totally different grade, and wall thickness. Then what are you going to do with the data? It’s disagreeing with the other 17.

You have to understand your populations. You have to try and get that plan together and do it that way. There’s lots of things we can do to facilitate that process.

Russel:  I’ve seen some operators that their practice is, if they do a dig, they uncover an entire joint, girth weld to girth weld, and collect a ton of information every time they do a dig. That raises the cost of the dig, but it significantly increases the value of the data that they’re gathering, or the value of the dig, I guess.

Simon:  I guess so. I think there’s a way you could increase the value even more. If we talk about the regulation requirements of what we need to do a bell hole in terms of measuring material properties, it’s pretty clear about the number of tests we need to do to measure wall thickness, strength, in terms of yield strength and UTS, and seam type, etc.

Uncovering a pipe, you’ll still only do that same number of tests on the one pipe, because normally, it won’t change from one end of the pipe to the other end of the pipe. One thing you can do is to dig on a girth weld.

Your excavation spans across the girth weld, and then you get two pipes for the cost of one dig. Ideally, if you were doing a dig, and you could expose 50 feet of material, what you would do is capture the pipe in the middle, two girth welds, and enough pipe on either side. Then in one excavation, you’ve measured three pipes.

Russel:  It makes perfect sense. I’d never thought about it that way, but it makes perfect sense.

Simon:  Some of the things we’ve been doing, developing, and I’ve been involved in is this whole bang for your buck kind of thing and understanding your populations. There’s ways of being able to identify exactly which girth welds you should go to in order to uncover two pieces of pipe so that it straddles two different populations.

Then, you can do one dig and capture two populations at the same time. I know we talk about it being opportunistically, but there’s lots of things we can do to add value in that process to say, “I’m going to do a dig. It’s opportunistic, but why don’t I do this?”

Maybe, you might want to plan a dig. Maybe, you don’t always want to do it opportunistically. Maybe, you want to say, “Okay, I want to collect the data for those populations. I’m going to strategically go and do a dig, and here’s where I’m going to do it.”

Russel:  I have no idea what the cost of doing a dig to effect a repair is, versus what would be the cost of doing a dig simply to gather data. Are they significantly different, or are they the same?

Simon:  The cost of actually doing the excavation is the same. Then, it goes to the repair cost. I guess, what you’d be looking at there is what type of repair. Obviously, if we’re doing a Type B welded sleeve, then that’s a different story. You’re on-site for a long time.

Russel:  I just don’t know if there’s more mobilization cost, or if there’s other things you’ve got to do in the dig to effect the repair that you wouldn’t have to do just to gather the information. I don’t know enough to know. It’d actually be interesting. I need to get a dig expert on the podcast and ask him all these questions, and I’d know it.

Simon:  Yeah. Actually measuring the material properties, etc., is a relatively easy thing to do. You’d maybe need half a day to do a pipe, and a couple of technicians with the techniques that we’ve got available to us now.

If you’ve got an excavation open, and it’s open while you’re doing a repair, there’s no reason why, while you’re doing a repair, you could be doing some testing further down the pipe and that kind of thing.

Russel:  Anybody doing a repair should be capturing the data, because that saves small, incremental cost.

Simon:  You’ve got it. It is.

Russel:  The flipside is doing a dig just to gather the data, that’s a different conversation.

Simon:  Is an expensive deal, and you better be sure you’re in the right spot. You better be sure you’re getting your money’s worth out of that one. You’re right about that, yeah.

Russel:  Somebody’s going to come up with a dadgum ground radar that collects the data just by setting it on the ground over the pipe. Somebody’s in a garage somewhere working on that right now.

Simon:  Well, there’s ILI that can do it, so you can use ILI to collect the material properties and attributes, so that’s a huge advantage.

Russel:  Yeah, but you get into the same thing about, “Well, yes, I can get it with an ILI, but I’ve got all the cost of running an ILI.” If I had a tool I could put in the back of a pickup truck, run it, and say, “I need to gather the data right here,” and see where my population change is and verify that, if I could do that without ever turning dirt, that would be pretty cool.

Simon:  Yeah, and I think that’s an important part. That’s where I step back to that planning part of thing. Not every approach is going to be equal on every pipeline.

If you’ve only got a half-mile section or a few hundred feet of missing data, then go and do a dig perhaps or do something, but if you’ve got a 50-mile pipeline that you’ve got no idea about, then maybe other options are certainly more pleasant.

Russel:  Yeah, maybe a different…If it’s a 48-inch pipe, it’s one problem. If it’s an 8-inch pipe, it’s another one, right?

Simon:  Yeah. It’s all about planning out what you need and when you need it.

Russel:  I haven’t done this in a while, Simon, but I think this would be appropriate. I think I need to go to my three key takeaways from this conversation and see if you think I learned anything in our conversation. [laughter]

Simon:  Maybe, this reflects on me more than you.

Russel:  I don’t know, man. Maybe, we equally hold that burden. I don’t know. Here’s my three key takeaways. I think the first key takeaway is just the whole idea of the three-legged stool. That, when you’re doing Integrity Management, there’s three sets of data that you need to be able to have a good program.

I’ve got to know what’s the operating conditions? I’ve got to know what do I actually have in the ground in the way of defects and issues? I need to know what the properties of that material are. Those three things are required to do any kind of program.

The other thing that I take away from this is if you have all of those things, good engineers can sit down and do the math to figure out what the situation is and build good plans.

Then the third key takeaway is if I don’t have the data, I need a plan for getting the data over time that makes sense.

Simon Slate:  Yes, absolutely. That’s a good point. That makes sense.

Russel:  Those are my three key takeaways. Did I do okay?

Simon:  I think we did a good job together, yeah. I think we’re all right.

Russel:  What’s my letter grade?

Simon:  B plus.

Russel:  Yeah, B plus.

[laughter]

Russel:  That’s because you’re not testing me on any of the math, and I appreciate that fact. Actually, I’m enough of a nerd that I would enjoy dusting off the memories to do all that math, but not today.

Simon:  Not today, no. Maybe, we haven’t got time.

Russel:  Hey, Simon, thanks so much for coming on. This has been fun, and truthfully, I’ve learned a lot. I take a lot away from this conversation. I really appreciate it.

Simon:  No, it’s been great. Good discussion. Thanks a lot, Russel.

Russel:  I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Simon. Just a reminder before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win to enter yourself in the drawing.

If you’d like to support the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or on your smart device podcast app. You could find instructions at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.

[music]

Russel:  If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, please let me know on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

Transcription by CastingWords