In this episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, host Russel Treat speaks with Martin van Onna from Strohm about the development and advantages of composite pipes in the pipeline industry.

Martin explains the composition, manufacturing process, and applications of thermoplastic composite pipes, TCP, emphasizing their benefits over traditional steel pipes, such as flexibility, strength, and resistance to corrosion.

They also discuss the economic considerations, lifespan, and inspection protocols associated with composite pipes, highlighting the potential for cost savings and improved performance in various environments.

An Introduction to Composite Pipe Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms:

• Martin van Onna is the Chief Executive Officer at Strohm. Connect with Martin on LinkedIn.
  • Strohm is the world’s first and leading manufacturer of fully bonded, Thermoplastic Composite Pipe. TCP offers the optimal solution in flowline, jumper and riser applications for Renewable and Energy markets. TCP does not corrode, is spoolable in long lengths, is light weight and reduces cost of installation and maintenance. TCP reduces the CO2 footprint of pipeline infrastructure with more than 50% compared to steel.
• Thermoplastic Composite Pipe: A composite pipe made by combining thermoplastic materials with reinforcing fibers, providing flexibility and strength.
• Composites are a blend of two or more dissimilar components to create a stronger, bonded material that supports a specific need, such as repairing damage in a pipeline. Composites are preferred in pipeline repair because of their strength, resistance to corrosion, versatility, and low coefficient of expansion.
• Spoolable pipe: A type of pipe that can be wound onto a spool, allowing for longer lengths and easier installation compared to rigid pipes.
• Epoxy: A type of thermosetting material used as a matrix material in composites, known for its strength and stiffness and resistance to environmental degradation. It is however, a rigid material.
• Polymer: A large molecule composed of repeating structural units, commonly used in creating plastics and composite materials. While less stiff than epoxy, it provides for flexibility and ductility and hence is the chosen matrix in TCP.
• Carbon fiber: A high-strength, lightweight fiber used as a reinforcement material in composites, known for its stiffness and durability. Typically, twice as strong and stiff as glass fiber.
• Glass fiber: A strong, lightweight fiber used in composite materials, providing good tensile strength and resistance to environmental conditions.
• PE (Polyethylene): A common type of polymer used in piping, known for its flexibility and chemical resistance.
• PE100: A grade of polyethylene that can handle higher pressures, commonly used in industrial applications.
• Matrix: The continuous phase in a composite material that surrounds and supports the reinforcement fibers. Can be thermosetting (such as epoxy), or thermoplastic (such as PE or other polymers such as PolyAmide).
• Fatigue: The weakening of a material caused by repeatedly applied loads, a critical factor in pipeline design.
• Creep: The tendency of a material to deform permanently under the influence of mechanical stresses over time.
• Aging: The process of a material becoming more brittle over time due to environmental factors like oxygen exposure.
• Softening: The reduction in stiffness of a polymer when exposed to certain chemicals or temperatures.
• Accelerated temperature testing: A method of testing materials by exposing them to higher temperatures to predict their long-term performance.
• Ultrasonic inspection: A non-destructive testing technique using high-frequency sound waves to detect flaws or changes in material properties.
• Delamination: The separation of layers in a composite material, often caused by impacts.
• Weight coating: An additional layer added to a pipeline to increase its weight, ensuring it stays submerged underwater.

An Introduction to Composite Pipe Full Episode Transcript:

Russel Treat: Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 339, sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, driving safety, environmental protection, and sustainability across the natural gas and oil industry through world-class standards and safety programs.

Since its formation as a standards-setting organization in 1919, API has delivered more than 800 standards to enhance industry operations worldwide. Find out more about API at api.org.

[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. To show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode.

This week, our winner is Thomas Smith with National Grid. Congratulations, Thomas. Your YETI’s on its way. To learn how you can win this prize stick around until the end of the episode.

This week, we speak with Martin van Onna from Strohm about composite pipe. Martin, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Martin van Onna: Thank you. Thank you very much, Russel. Nice to be here.

Russel: I’m glad to have you. I’ve been wanting to get somebody who’s a…I’ve been saying plastic pipe, but you corrected me. It’s composite pipe that we’re going to talk about today.

I’ve been wanting to get somebody in to talk about this subject for a while. It’s something I know very little about. Really glad to have you here today, Martin. I appreciate you taking the time.

Martin: Great to be on the show, Russel. Looking forward to it.

Russel: Let me start out by just asking if you would tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, and what you do.

Martin: My name is Martin van Onna. I’m from the Netherlands. I have a background in aerospace engineering. 17 years ago, I co-founded the company called Strohm. With our background from aerospace engineering, we developed a technology around composite materials in pipelines.

We’re growing very quickly now, Russel.

Russel: Cool. Give me a definition of what is a composite. I want you to start with some really basic stuff, because I’m learning here.

Martin: Yes, and that is a good question. A definition of composite is that it is a combination of two different materials. A composite can actually be like a steel in a concrete matrix. You could call that composite. You could call composite different types of wood brought together.

In a modern sense of the word, composite is typically describing a fiber and a matrix. A fiber would be a carbon fiber, for instance, or a glass fiber. That would be embedded in a matrix of either an epoxy or a polymer, so a plastic. In our case, we’ve developed a thermoplastic composite pipe, meaning we bring together plastics with fibers.

Russel: A lot of pipeliners are familiar with composite repair. The technologies, I would think, are similar. Would that be a valid assumption?

Martin: Yes. In composite repair, often, fiberglass is used, if I’m correct. Fiberglass is typically an epoxy combined with a fiber, in this case, glass fiber.

Now, in our case, when we started to develop our technology, we thought that for spoolable pipe — so not for rigids, but for spoolable pipe — it would be a better choice of materials to combine fibers with a plastic, which is ductile, instead of an epoxy.

That combination would provide us with the benefit of making long spoolable pipes made out of composite materials.

Russel: Martin, I find this interesting. One of the questions I had is — again, kind of simplistic — how is plastic pipe different than composite pipe? I think you answered that. A lot of what we’re familiar using, like in home construction and irrigation, and that kind of thing, is pure plastic pipe.

Martin: Yes, indeed. If you have a typical pure plastic pipe, you would use, for instance, polyethylene, or PE. One of the grades used a lot around the world is PE100, meaning they can handle 150 PSI or 10 BAR. That means that it’s the plastic alone that carries that load, which is obviously not a lot.

So, we add a matrix. We add a combination of fibers — carbon fibers or glass fibers — that are much, much stronger. That creates a strength member that strengthen the plastic. We still start with a plastic liner, but we add a composite layer that adds both strength as well as stiffness to the plastic liner.

Russel: Anybody who’s familiar with…I’m a nerd in this domain, but I’m interested in boating. The technology in boating has changed a lot.

If you look at fiberglass boats that were built 30 years ago, the fiberglass is quite thick. Now, that fiberglass is much thinner. Even though it’s thinner, it’s also much stronger because of the nature of the materials they’re using.

Likewise, the state-of-the-art is beginning to become carbon fiber versus fiberglass. You’re even getting more strength and less weight, and there’s benefits to that.

This is what we’re talking about is engineered composites for the purpose of pipelining. You already mentioned one thing that’s interesting is the idea of making this as spooled pipe versus rigid pipe.

Martin: Correct.

Russel: I would assume there’s some real benefits to doing it in a spool, because you can run longer lengths before you need a joint.

Martin: Correct. As you probably know, composite materials can be more costly than steel per kilo, so to speak. When we developed our technology, we looked at lowering the total installed cost.

Maybe a pipe by meter or by foot is more expensive than steel. We wanted to create a system where pipe plus installation would provide a total installed cost benefit to the operator. Hence, with our technology, we’ve developed a system where we can go, in effect, to endless pipes.

Typically, when we talk about an eight-inch pipe, for instance, we put 3,000 meters — that’s almost 10,000 feet — onto one spool, enabling our clients and the contractors to install quickly, thereby lowering total installed cost.

Russel: That’s a pretty compelling thing. When you start talking about 10,000 feet in a single string of pipe, it’s uncontemplated. A typical joint of steel pipe would be 80 feet. 100 of those is 8,000, so that’s something around 120 joints you don’t have to make.

Martin: Yes.

Russel: That’s a big dadgum deal, not only in terms of installation cost but life cycle cost. That’s joints you don’t have to manage and maintain and monitor.

Martin: No, indeed. For us, it was essential to create acceptance of a new technology in, let’s say, a conservative marketplace.

We would never succeed unless we would have a system that would be simple, predictable, easy to understand how it can work and how it can fail. We’ll talk about that later. Acceptance is around simplicity, understanding how it works, and lowering total installed cost.

In our case, our system do not corrode. The maintenance cost is very low, if existed at all. The lack of OpEx is an additional benefit to the end user.

Russel: If I could, Martin, I apologize about interrupting you. I want to talk a little bit more about how this is made. What is the manufacturing process for a 10,000-foot spool of 12-inch pipe?

Martin: We start with the liner, which is, let’s say, the inner plastic pipe. It’s the fluid barrier, but also, it is, at the same time, the mold onto which we wind the fiber reinforcements later on. We start with the first step, blowing the liner, which is a simple standard extrusion process.

[crosstalk]

Russel: Anybody familiar with plastics, manufacturers know what extrusion is.

Martin: Exactly, so that is standard. We then have the whole length of that liner in a carousel. We then run that liner from the carousels through winding stations.

We have a number of winding stations located in a sequence. Each winding station applying a tape of fiber reinforced with the same plastic as the liner. The fact that we use the same polymer in between the fibers as we have in the liner allows us to weld them together.

Russel: That was one of the questions. I would assume that would cause that to bond.

Martin: Exactly. We don’t use adhesives. What we wanted to do is to have something of a bonding by welding tapes together of the glass or carbon fiber with the polymer. Using one and the same polymer in the matrix and the liner, allows us to do such welding, without having to apply any adhesives. Thus we create a solid, monolithic wall.

Depending on the design and the specifications of the end user, we simply design the number of layers of reinforcement that we need. It can be as little as 20, but it can also be as high as 80 layers if we have a 10,000-PSI pipe.

Russel: One of the things about these composites and using these carbon fibers, you get to very high pressure, you get a very strong pipe.

Martin: Correct. You already mentioned it in your introduction, carbon fiber and fiberglass fiber. Carbon fiber is typically twice as strong, but also twice as stiff as glass fiber.

It allows us to bring systems to 10,000 PSI, so internal pressure, the tensile strength. Also, in offshore and subsea, it allows us to bring systems down to 3,000 meters water depth, so almost — what is that? — 10,000 feet of water depth, and enable the pipe to handle the external pressure. For the external pressure, we need to have stiffness.

Russel: That’s a real issue with steel. Steel is pretty good with internal pressure, not nearly as good with external pressure.

Martin: Correct.

Russel: Steel works in tension better than in compression.

[crosstalk]

Martin: By creating a layer where we have a solid wall so that all the fibers are supported by the polymer, we allow the fiber to take compression.

It’s a little bit like if you would take a rope, Russel, if you take a rope and you would try to compress it, you would see all the strands of the rope moving everywhere. A rope is not able to deal with compression.

If we would support all the individual strands by a matrix of the plastic that is melt-fused together, we suddenly enable the fibers to handle compression. This allows us to move both to high pressures, but also to high external pressures.

Russel: One of the other questions I wanted to ask is, what kind of service this will work in? We’ve talked about undersea, underwater, great-depth underwater. I would assume you can do it for direct burial pipe.

What kind of products can you move? Is there any limitation to the kind of products where you’re concerned about chemical interactions between the polymers and the product you’re moving?

Martin: That’s a good question. Typically, we select a polymer based on the service that the client wants to use.

For instance, hydrocarbons, oil products, we have polymers that have very good chemical stability to deal with that. Today, we can deal with or our systems can deal with hydrocarbons, natural gas, water, of course, but also methanol, MEG, a variety of chemicals, and CO2 and Hydrogen.

Russel: Propane, butane.

Martin: Yes.

Russel: All that type of stuff, so all the natural gas liquids.

Martin: All that we can deal with.

Russel: Interesting.

Martin: Now, what we see is that if we have a hydrocarbon, for instance, it gets absorbed a little bit by the polymer. The effect, the result that we see is that so-called softening. That is something that we incorporate into our design.

When we have to use a system for hydrocarbons, for oil, or for natural gas, we see a different level of softening than, for instance, with water injection or with methanol. That difference in softening is something that you would never see in steel. That is typical for composites and plastics, and that we need to account for in our design.

Russel: Yes. That’s a great tee-up for the next question. That is, what is the useful life, and how do you maintain the pipe?

Martin: Today, the design life of our systems is 30 years. We are still counting to increase that. Where is it now? Today, limited to 30 years. That is limited to the testing data that we already have.

What we do is we do accelerated temperature testing. We increase the temperature — how do you call it? — to capture a longer period of time in the testing data that we have. Today, we have 14,000 hours of testing data that equates to 30 years design life.

Now, the ultimate limit of composites is around 50 to 60 years, because — this is the oldest plastic pipes that are out there, and composite pipes that are out there — at some point, they age. That’s the technical term, they age, and aging happens under influence of oxygen. It is a very slow process, but somewhere at 50 or 60 years is the real ultimate maximum life.

Russel: Interesting. I don’t know what the analogy would be for steel pipe. Certainly, in the United States — and that’s what I’m most familiar with — a big part of our infrastructure was installed in the ’70s, so all that pipe is getting to 50 years old.

When a lot of that pipe was installed, nobody was thinking about, “How are you going to maintain it 50 years from now?” I would expect that, with composites, we’ll be learning things over time about how to extend their useful life that we don’t yet know.

Some interesting questions, I guess, is what I’m driving at about what does that really mean.

Martin: A number of things are the same. In steel, you have long-term effects that are fatigue. You have creep that is a long-term effect. For glass fibers  we have creep and fatigue as well.. The only difference is composites have a much, much longer fatigue life. For carbon fibers though, creep and fatigue simply do not exist at all, making it much easier to design for long design lives.

Typically, fatigue is the most limiting factor for composites pipes as it normally is for steel. Then with steel, of course, you have corrosion, which we don’t see in the composite pipes.

In composites then there is the one real, let’s say, remaining element is this thing called aging. That is simply the very slow, predictable, and linear process of the material becoming slowly but surely more brittle or let’s say, glass-like.

A plastic pipe that you can simply bend and change easily when it is new, if you would do that after 50 or 60 years, then it would probably break if you would try to bend it. That’s where the ultimate limit is. It is not like corrosion in steel. It’s a very predictable process.

Russel: You talked also about softening. A lot of people that listen to this podcast are going to be involved in crude oil or natural gas, gas liquids, refined products, that sort of thing. Is that likewise a linear process that’s predictable or is it something that you have to measure the effects over time to know where you’re at?

Martin: No, the interesting thing of softening is that it is a reversible thing. It’s like a sponge. We can have softening because of crude. Imagine if you would stop pumping the crude, it would go out again, and the plastic would be the same as day one. It’s not a long-term effect of degradation. The only thing it does happens, it is like a sponge in the sense that it would make the polymer a bit softer, and so we simply have to account for it in our design.

That is one of the differences with steel. Steel doesn’t have softening, so you know your stiffness of your steel and you can calculate with that. In our case, on composite pipes, we need to really think about temperature, because that makes a polymer softer, and the fluids that we pump through, because that also can make the polymer softer.

What we have done in our design models, depending on the fluids, we know how much softer it becomes, and so we can translate it in a temperature shift. Imagine if we know the strength of our pipe in room temperature with water, we know that when we have hydrocarbons, we have to pretend that it is hotter, and then we have still the same results.

Russel: The hydrocarbon has the same effect as increased temperature, and then you have to calculate and design for that.

Martin: Exactly.

Russel: That makes perfect sense. What about inspection? In the metal pipe world, we run tools, and we take measurements, and we get an idea of metal loss, cracking, roundness, those types of things. Are composite pipes likewise inspectable, and what are you looking for?

Martin: That’s a very, very good question, Russel. There are some similarities and some differences with steel. Sometimes, I’ve received the question quite often of people asking me, “Martin, how do I measure wall thickness?” I would tend to ask, “Why do you want to measure the wall thickness?”

They will say, “Because of corrosion, of course.” I said, “We don’t have that.” There’s some things that we don’t need to measure. We don’t need to measure the wall thickness, but what we do want to measure is, are the different layers still welded together?

Do we have maybe delamination? Imagine if you had a severe impact or you suspect that there’s been an impact, then we have to provide the end-user with the opportunity or the ability to do a separate check of, “Hey, is the integrity of my system still as I want it to be?” You know ultrasonic measurements…I actually don’t even know if ultrasonic is used in steel.

[crosstalk]

Russel: Absolutely. There’s two kinds of basic technologies of magnetic flux and the other is ultrasonic. Magnetic flux tends to be used for metal loss, and ultrasonic tends to be used for cracking.

Martin: Our systems are not metallic, so we don’t have magnetism, so that wouldn’t work. We have done with first users that have used our systems, in this case, it’s Petronas in Malaysia, they’ve developed an ultrasonic tool that they can run as a pig through the system.

We have correlated and validated that the results from ultrasonic allow us to see, “Hey, do we have maybe abrasion? On the liner, do we have still the right liner thickness on the inside? Do we have roundness, or under-roundness, or ovality issues that could lead to a suspicion of crushing, for instance?

“Do we have delaminations between the layers? Finally, the coating, which is the protective coating on the outside, is there an impact, or a dent, or another type of damage that has reduced or affected the thickness of the outer coating?”

Where we don’t suffer from corrosion, obviously, so normally, if the pipe is operated within its operating limits, you would not see anything during 30 years. We don’t require regular inspection intervals. That is not required.

What we do advise our clients is that, “Hey, imagine if you suspect that an incident has happened, there is a suspicion of an impact or something happens. You may see even loss of pressure, so surely, then something’s happened. You can run either a pig through the inside of the pipe, or you can run a specific inspection on the outside.

“Both can be done with ultrasonic, and that allows us to assess everything that can affect the integrity or the lifetime of the pipe.”

Russel: Which of those risk is the most material?

Martin: The only one that is real material is impact, Russel. We have our oldest systems are eight years in operation. Our oldest system is at 860 BAR, so that’s 12,500 PSI on the North Sea. Operating since 2016.

In principle, when everything is simply within the operating parameters, nothing happens, and there’s no degradation, etc., and then also, inspection is not required. What we have seen, for instance, once, is a platform, an element of a platform broke off and fell on the pipe subsea, causing a severe impact.

In that occasion, we have to go out and inspect the pipe and make a replacement or to cut the pipe. Impacts, I’m talking about offshore and subsea mainly, you’re talking about anchor drop, anchor drag. Those are typically heavy types of impact.

[crosstalk]

Russel: The primary thing you see in direct burial from an impact perspective is you can have landslide issues or rock impingement issues. Those are more geotechnical, but the primary thing is backhoe, particularly if you’re using it in utility service.

The closer you are to homes, the more likely you are to have somebody dig. You mentioned that there’s an outer coating. What is the purpose of the outer coating? What does it do? Is it part of the strength? It’s typical to coat steel pipe. That’s normally a method of managing cathodic protection.

Martin: In our case, it’s the main element of providing for a protective outer coating.

Russel: If there is damage, it damages the coating, not the pipe.

Martin: Exactly.

Russel: It’s not doing anything else, in terms of you wouldn’t need to be using it for corrosion. You’re just using it as a way to protect the pipe itself.

Martin: That’s correct. I’ll give you one example. You know, probably, the Nord Stream pipeline in Germany that provided natural gas to Germany. We have just installed six pipelines offshore Germany that replaced the Nord Stream that got severely damaged in the war in Ukraine.

Those systems are installed offshore, and they provide eight percent of German natural gas demand. There, we’ve seen one pipe where during installation, the outer coating got damaged. We go out, in this case, to the offshore vessel, and we perform a repair of that outer coating onsite.

Russel: Interesting. What are some of the challenges with composite pipe that are unique or different than what people would be familiar with steel?

Martin: I would say one of the challenges that we always see is lack of knowledge and comfort. All people are, I would say, the same, in the sense that they are comfortable to work with what they know, what they understand, how it works, and how it fails. People know steel, they like steel.

You can hit it with a hammer and you have a dent. You don’t have a crack. You understand how to design it. That is, still today, probably, the one thing that is the biggest challenge for us. We always have to provide comfort to people to help them understand how our system works and how it fails.

Russel: Pipeliners by their nature are risk-averse, as we should be. We have a fiduciary responsibility to minimize risk. Lack of knowledge is the most extreme risk. The way I manage risk is I make sure I have a very good understanding of the operating characteristics and the failure characteristics.

I have programs and processes in place to maximize the operations and mitigate the failures. When I have something new, then I don’t know enough to know how to do that. It’s a big deal in our business.

It’s why there’s so much research that we do and why a lot of that research is very applied and specific, because we’re looking at, what are the failure cases for this product, in this use, with this kind of operation? That makes sense.

Martin: Absolutely, because for us to create acceptance of a novel technology in a market like this, we needed to create a new standard. There was no standards. We created it with support from the industry in a joint industry program.

We still today, we do a lot of effort in working with our clients, but also working with contractors in making them comfortable around how our systems work so that they can safely design and use our components in a full architecture of pipelines.

A second, I would say, challenge that we do have, we take advantage where we can of the fact that our pipes are light, they’re super light. In honesty, Russell, especially in the offshore space, lightness doesn’t always help. We need the pipe to sink, so we need to add weight.

Russel: You don’t want your pipe floating. That’s not good.

Martin: No. As my wife always tells me, it’s easier to add weight than to lose it. What we do is we developed a weight coating where we can add only the weight that we need for the pipe to sink, but not too much.

Russel: I have a little bit of knowledge about underwater steel pipe, and even steel pipe will float depending on whether it’s in saltwater or freshwater and what product it’s carrying. If it’s carrying crude oil, crude oil is lighter than water. It wants to float.

Martin: Absolutely.

Russel: Keeping pipe on the lakebed, or the seabed, or the riverbed, it’s a non-trivial engineering problem.

Martin: Absolutely. I fully agree.

Russel: That’s interesting. The lightness has some real advantages from a standpoint of shipping it, and moving it, and all that, but it has some disadvantages depending on the service you’re putting it in.

Martin: That’s exactly the point where we are pushing it, especially in places like West Africa or other places where the ability to use small vessels, transport vessels that come around places like Angola, Nigeria on a regular basis, that provides us with an advantage. But, in places where there’s a strong infrastructure already available, we don’t always have those advantages.

It’s our job to understand the market, our clients, to make sure that we provide the right solution to their needs.

Russel: That’s true for any of us that are suppliers to the pipeliners. It’s part of our fiduciary responsibilities to make sure they understand. We want them to be able to operate safely as well.

Let’s talk a little bit about economics. I’m going to tee up this question. I’d like to hear you comment on it. If I were going to put 100 miles of 12-inch 2,500-PSI gas line in, what would be the economic difference from a life cycle cost of composite versus steel?

Martin: Life cycle, that is a good one. I don’t know exactly on life cycle. On total installed, so total installed, that is what we focus on mainly, is where we see that up to typically 30 to 40 kilometer, we win from carbon steel.

When the length is even longer, then the steel per foot is so cheap that we may not win. Typically, up to 40 kilometer, and I’m sorry, Russel, I’m not up to speed with miles. [laughs]

[crosstalk]

Russel: Yeah, 1.6 kilometers per mile.

Martin: Wait.

Russel: Just add 30 percent, basically, and you’re going to be close.

Martin: Let’s say up to 30 miles, we typically win on a total installed cost basis. What we understand from our clients is that they tell me — and maybe you know much more about that — is that OpEx, operating costs, maintenance, they say can be anywhere between 10 and 20 percent on a net present value at starting.

That would mean that probably if we would compare a composite pipe to carbon steel, we would be competitive in lengths up to, let’s say, 50 miles.

Russel: Interesting.

Martin: In the offshore spaces, of course, even easier for us, because your installation of assets are so expensive. In the offshore space, it’s different.

Russel: Yeah, your installation construction costs offshore, particularly at depth, are so radically different than onshore that I could see that to be extremely compelling. I find this conversation interesting. I say this all the time. I’m not a integrity guy. Although I’m a civil engineer, I’m not really a construction guy because I’ve worked in software my entire career, more instrumentation and control.

This conversation is fascinating to me. I’m just thinking about other industries. Plastics have replaced steel and continue to replace steel. Composites even more so. They’re stronger. They’re lighter. They don’t have some of the problems that you have with steel. They have other problems. There’s tradeoffs there. I certainly see where, as we go forward in time, composites are probably going to be even more and more of a compelling alternative.

Martin: Yeah. I’ll give you one example. Two days ago we won a project in Brazil where our client and big operator has pipes that corrode because of CO2. That’s CO2-induced corrosion. They have flexible pipes, so not steel pipes, but flexible pipes that they have to replace every five years. That’s amazing because of the level of corrosion.

We have a qualified solution, 30 years, and so we won this project. Here we are in one single pipe, we have more carbon fiber than in the 787 Dreamliner. We literally have the biggest composite structures in the world, and yet, we win.

This is so exciting for us. It’s taken a while, but people are coming around to see the unique benefits, like I said, no corrosion, really long lifetime. We believe that…

[crosstalk]

Russel: Martin, it’s not unlike what we’ve seen in the pipeline world around composite repair. 30 years ago, if you went and talked to somebody about composite repair, they looked at you like you’re from the planet Mars. “You’re crazy. I’m not putting that putty and string on my pipe. Are you kidding me?”

Now, it’s still a lot of steel-on-steel repairs, a lot of sleeves, all that kind of stuff, but people are looking at composites more and more because of the things you can do with composites. There’s places where you can’t affect the steel-on-steel repair and composites make sense.

The interesting thing, and I think the interesting thing about this conversation for me is beyond the technology of composite pipe, all the things that you’re learning about operating, maintaining, service, the things that operators need to know in order to be able to utilize it throughout its useful life and mitigate whatever risks that are there.

Listen, it’s a great conversation. I appreciate your time. I hope that pipeliners listen to this and start to look at this as an alternative.

Martin: Thank you very much, Russel. It’s been great to be on your show, on your podcast. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

Russel: All right. Thanks, Martin.

Martin: Thank you very much.

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

If you’d like to support the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you happen to listen.

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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.

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