In this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, Dr. Keith Leewis joins to discuss the differences between old and new steel pipe and why those distinctions matter for pipeline integrity and maintenance practices. The conversation highlights how manufacturing methods, coatings, and metallurgical properties influence how pipeline materials behave over time.
The episode also touches on practical considerations for evaluating in-service pipe, managing repairs, and understanding the risks unique to various generations of steel.
Listen now to learn more about how material history shapes asset management decisions in modern pipeline operations.

Issues with Old vs. New Pipe Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Dr. Keith Leewis is a pipeline safety and integrity expert with over four decades of experience spanning engineering, materials, operations, inspections, and regulatory compliance, supported by extensive industry leadership and academic research roles. Connect with Keith on LinkedIn.
• Metallurgy is the study of the physical and chemical behavior of metals as it relates to pipeline steel properties and performance.
• Integrity Management Program is the structured process operators use to assess, maintain, and ensure pipeline system safety and fitness for service.
• GIS (Geographic Information System) is the digital mapping and asset-tracking system used to locate and manage pipeline infrastructure.
• B31.8S is the ASME integrity management standard for gas transmission pipelines, guiding assessment methods and integrity practices.
• DA Standards (Direct Assessment) are integrity assessment processes used to evaluate pipeline condition (internal corrosion, external corrosion, SCC) without physical inspection.
• ILI (In-Line Inspection) is an inspection technique using pigs equipped with sensors to detect corrosion, cracks, and other anomalies inside the pipeline.
• Pups are short segments of pipe stored for later use in construction or repair that may have different manufacturing dates than the mainline pipe.
• As-Builts are construction records detailing the actual installed pipeline configuration, weld locations, pipe lengths, and materials.
• Anti-Corrosion Coating is a protective layer applied to pipeline steel to prevent corrosion, with types varying by construction era.
• Coal Tar Coating is an older coating system using coal-tar enamel wrapped with paper or asbestos, commonly used before the 1970s.
• Fusion Bond Epoxy (FBE) is a factory-applied modern coating providing strong corrosion protection and widely used since the 1980s.
• AMPP (Association for Materials Protection and Performance) is a global community of professionals dedicated to materials protection through the advancement of corrosion control and protective coatings. AMPP protects infrastructure and assets worldwide through member and workforce education and credentialing, company accreditation, technological innovation, and global standardization.
• Hardness Testing is a nondestructive technique used to estimate steel strength properties such as yield and ultimate tensile strength.
• ASTM Specifications are industry standards defining acceptable chemical composition ranges for steel, such as carbon, sulfur, and manganese levels.
• Girth Weld is the circumferential weld joining two pipe joints, often used as a reference point in inspection and integrity work.
• Nondestructive Testing (NDT) is a set of inspection methods (e.g., X-ray, ultrasonic testing, hardness testing) used to assess steel condition without damaging the pipeline.
• Field-Applied Coating is coating applied at welds during construction because factory coating cannot be applied to welded joints.
• Clock Spring is a composite repair system wrapped around pipelines to reinforce areas with corrosion or wall loss.
• Magnetic Flux Inspection (MFL) is an ILI technique that uses magnetic fields to detect metal loss or changes in pipe wall thickness.
• Metastable Structure is the microstructural condition of modern steels where strength is retained at low temperatures but degrades if reheated, such as during welding.
• Heat-Affected Zone (HAZ) is the area of steel adjacent to a weld where heat alters microstructure and mechanical properties.
• Carbon Equivalent is a calculated value that predicts how easily steel can be welded and how susceptible it is to cracking.
• Type B Sleeve is a welded pressure-containing repair sleeve installed over damaged pipeline sections requiring circumferential welds.
• Composite Repair is an external non-metallic repair method used to reinforce areas of wall loss, with specific pressure and application limitations.
• Flux Core Welding / Gas Metal Arc Welding are construction and repair welding techniques influencing heat input and steel microstructure.
• Stick Welding (SMAW) is a manual welding method common in pipeline work, characterized by higher heat input and thicker weld profiles.
• Three-Layer Coating Systems are advanced protective systems (often polyethylene or polyurethane) used particularly in Europe for enhanced durability.
• Cathodic Protection (CP) is an electrochemical corrosion protection method used to prevent external corrosion on buried pipelines.
• Class Locations are regulatory classifications determining required pipe wall thickness, design factors, and allowable operating pressures based on population density.
• Ductility is the steel’s ability to stretch or deform without breaking—higher in older steels and lower in modern high-strength steels.
• Inclusions are microscopic particles within steel that influence crack susceptibility, especially in weld regions.
• Wall Loss is the reduction of pipe wall thickness due to corrosion or mechanical damage.
• Fitness for Service is the engineering assessment process used to determine if a pipeline containing defects can continue operating safely.
• PPIM (Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management Conference & Exhibition) is the largest technical exhibition of its kind in the world, designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of utility and in-line inspection pigging.

Issues with Old vs. New Pipe Full Episode Transcript

Russell Treat:

Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast” episode 418, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, operations and compliance software for the pipeline operator to address safety program management, control room management, and field operations.

Find out more about POEMS at enersyscorp.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, Russell Treat.

Russell:

Thanks for listening to this podcast. I appreciate you taking the time, and to show the appreciation, we give away a cool YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, our winner is Lacey Sherman with EDM Services. Congratulations, Lacey, your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this cool YETI tumbler, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, Keith Leewis of Leewis and Associates returns, and we’re going to talk about issues with new versus old steel pipe. Keith, welcome back to the Pipeliners podcast.

Keith Leewis: It’s good to be back. I enjoyed the first one.

Russell: I’m looking forward to digging in a little deeper about issues around old and new steel. Before we do that, I’m going to ask you again if you would just give us a quick intro. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a pipeline metallurgist.

Keith:

The easiest thing is when I was working in the steel industry and that started to go away in the early ’80s. I went from making 300 ton down to welding. Then I ended up working with TransCanada Pipelines and helping with their materials and welding, and got involved in the GIS system, putting together their first integrity management program they had there, too.

Then I ended up working for the Gas Research Institute and helped put together B31.8S, which is the integrity standard. That’s when I went into depth into corrosion because I helped write all three of the DA standards, and I got involved in writing the standards for ILI and all kinds of other inspection-related stuff plus…

Russell: You started out making steel, then you went into constructing and using steel, and then you went into maintaining steel, kind of?

Keith: Kind of, from the R&D perspective. I steal from everybody in order to put together my career, I think.

Russell:

That’s what all of us do. Reminds me of a song that Willie Nelson wrote, “We’re all just stealing from our friends.” It’s the same melody in colored sequence, and it’s all these guys singing their songs. It’s all against that same melody and chord sequence.

They’re all still in licks and they’re still…It’s pretty funny. That’s what we do, we collaborate.

Keith: Yep.

Russell: We’re all working as a community to learn this stuff.

Keith: If it wasn’t for friends, we would still be out in the wilderness.

Russell:

I’ve made lifelong friends doing this stuff for sure. In our last episode, talked a little bit about metallurgy and the fundamentals, excuse me, and we talked a little bit about the differences in steel types.

One of the things that I took away from that conversation is that the nature of the steel, how it was made, its carbon content, its yield strength, its max strength, all those kinds of things go to how I should use that steel, and once that steel’s in use, how I should manage that steel to keep it healthy, keep it serviceable.

Keith: That’s a good way to think about it.

Russell: If I’m a brand new integrity engineer and I’m taking over an asset, what would you tell somebody to begin in terms of understanding what they have and how to go forward? Maybe a little different frame than what we talked about in the past, but I’m hoping I’m not tripping you up here.

Keith:

No. In some ways, what you want to know is that construction knowledge of the pipeline. You want to know where you bought your materials from and where you put all that pipe. Then it’ll give you an idea of how it’ll perform a little differently.

In some cases, the coating on the pipe makes a big difference, and we’ve changed that over time as well. If we’re just talking about mechanical properties, you really need to know what mill you bought it from and around the period of when it was made.

It’s not always made the same time it got shipped, but generally, it is. Especially if you’ve got pups that have been in the storage yard for 20 years, then you need to replace a piece of pipe out in the field, for example. Those are the kinds of things you should have.

They should be in your drawings, which nowadays are electronic, so that the tracing is all in that part. That gives you an idea of the…

Russell: If I had steel in the ground and I didn’t have records, how would I go about determining if I’m dealing with an older versus newer steel?

Keith:

The first thing you got to do is dig it up because you don’t have any paper records. When you expose it, it’ll have a coating on it.

The anti-corrosion coating, they’re usually in different decades for these. If it’s really old and it’s closer to the Korean War or the Second World War, it’ll probably be coal tar with paper, or if you’re really lucky, asbestos wrapped around it.

Russell: Lucky in not a good way.

Keith:

Yeah. [laughs] The pipe, as it was going in the ground, would still be lifted in the air, and they would actually have a machine that wrapped the coating around there, whether it was paper, or cloth, or something.

They would actually coat it with the coal tar, and then wrap it, and then lower it down in the ground. Starting in the ’70s, we started to get into things like fusion bond epoxy. We started to be in the ’80s, and that’s generally what we have, and it’s usually a single layer.

There was some in-between times, we wrapped it with plastic instead of paper and tar. Those are typically the ones that we find a lot of problems in because the plastic gets stretched around by the movement of the soil according to the amount of water and things in it.

It traps water between the pipe and the plastic, which insulates it from the corrosion protective currents that we put on the pipe. That’s the first look at it. Then when you take the coating off…

Russell: Is there any place I could go to get a document or a standard or anything that would tell me these are the types of coatings that were used and the timeframes that were typically used? I know there’s still people that use coal tar.

Keith: We use mastic and other things too still. Yeah, there is. I would go to…It’s AMMP, who replaced NACE when they amalgamated. They’ll probably have discussions on that. I’ve written some stuff in the past.

Russell: Go to AMMP and look for papers.

Keith: And report so. Look for a book. It’s probably the first thing before you look for papers because they have a lot of papers. [laughs]

Russell: Yes. Yes, they do.

Keith: Then the number of books are probably only in the hundreds. There’s a good chance that there’ll be a discussion there. Talk to some of the old white-haired guys like us. They were around and probably have seen that stuff, and the advantages and disadvantages.

Russell: That’s the whole idea of the podcast, is find the old white-haired guys and talk to them, learn.

Keith: It’s important. Sometimes they’re not engineers. Sometimes they’re the guys who’ve been working out at the compressor stations.

Russell: Sure. Sometimes it’s the guy who’s been there 30 years knows. That pipe predates me. This is funny, but it’s also true, is a lot of these facilities, there’s multigenerational employees there.

Keith: Yeah. Some of them are in the same family.

Russell: My grandfather strung that pipe in 19…whatever. [laughs]

Keith: He rammed all the joints together.

Russell: Exactly. I’ve had some folks on the podcast that are third-generation pipeliners and talk about that sort of thing. It’s fun.

Keith:

Then you got to take it off. Then take it off. There are tools you can get now which are instrumented hardness testing. They will actually give you a yield and an ultimate. Hardness testing will always tell you the ultimate. That’s been around forever.

The instrumented ones will give you spot measurements all around the pipe of what the yield is. You can also use tools to give you an idea what the composition is. You can look up in the ASTM specs to see if they match.

You can get things like manganese sulfur or silicon sulfur. You may be able to pick up some of the micro-alloying in there, but they’re fairly low, but you’ll get the major ones.

Russell: I’m aware of some pipeline operators that whenever they do a dig, they expose an entire string weld to weld, and they’ll x-ray the wells, and they’ll do nondestructive testing for yield, max strength, and for various contents so that they can characterize the steel and confirm that what they find in the ground matches what they have in their records.

Keith: The strength, for example, will help sort things out as well. Do you know why we dig from girth weld to girth weld?

Russell:

There’s lots of reasons. I’ll tell you what I believe to be true. I’ll say my standard disclaimer that this isn’t what I do. One reason for doing it from girth weld to girth weld is I could correlate it to my tool.

A lot of the tools will pick up the welds and they’ll have GIS, so I can also correlate where the weld is versus what the GIS and what tool told me where the weld is.

I can also inspect the welds. Because they are all field-applied coatings at the weld spots, there’s things that we can check with the code…We have higher risk at the welds, I would say, than we typically do with the pipe itself.

That allows me to identify a full string of pipe. Then if I can characterize a single string, then I can know that for some distance upstream, downstream without single stream, I’ve got a characterized pipe.

Keith:

You’re close, and it goes back to before we had pigs, too. As a welding engineer, I’ve never seen a round piece of pipe. They’re never the same length. When you go back to your drawings, you can confirm you’re in the right spot by the length of the joint in your drawings.

That joint now, you should use girth weld on ILI in order to do that. Sometimes you’d have to dig up two joints in order to make sure that they were the right ones because they’re different length and you need to check the drawings to make sure you’re in the right spot.

Russell: How big a difference is there in length? Is it inches or is it partial inches?

Keith: It could be half inches, half inch. When you’re building it, you sometimes bend it because of handling. You got to cut it off, and re-bevel it and put it back together again. That measurements in your drawings, they’re related.

Russell: In your as-builts?

Keith: Yeah, in your as-builts. When we were doing the automatic welding, we would actually have a lathe that we’d stick inside. Then we’d cut it back to the right length with the torch and then put that lathe in and do the weld prep because we’re doing narrow gap welding at that time, too.

Russell: You have educated me with something I didn’t know, as it goes back to the old school days of knowing I’m getting ready to do whatever I need to do on the right piece of pipe.

Keith: It’s like when we put the first clock springs on. We’d go back and look for it because this is where we thought it was, and oh, damn it. It wasn’t there. We didn’t survey it incorrectly. We had to go and dig some more holes.

Russell: Oh, my gosh.

Keith: Now we put steel bands on it so you could pick them up with a pig then.

Russell: We learned, right?

Keith: We learned the hard way.

Russell: We learned these hard lessons.

Keith: When we had to cut 64 of the original clock springs off in order to do the testing for their estimated life performance. That’s when we learned, “Well, we didn’t do this quite right. We need to do it a little better.” [laughs]

Russell: That’s called experience. That’s what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

Keith: I was suggesting they just take Susan B. Anthony’s and put it on either side and then pick it up with a with a magnetic flux, but anyway.

Russell: Exactly.

Keith: Nobody else used them, right? Anyhow, that’s another rabbit hole. [laughs]

Russell: We’re showing our age. The fact we’re even laughing at that joke. A lot of people are going to be, what do you mean, Susan? What’s a Susan B. Anthony? It is a dollar that the treasury released that looked too much like a quarter and nobody used them.

Keith: It didn’t have that much silver in it, but it had a shitload of nickel. [laughs]

Russell: Exactly.

Keith: So it would get picked up. Anyway.

Russell: Let’s talk a little bit about some of the issues.

Keith: We’re off track.

Russell: Yes, of course. Let’s talk a little bit about old steel versus new steel. What are the things that I need to be aware of when I’m looking at my integrity management program, and how would I manage old steel differently than how I manage new steel?

Keith:

Old steel, the strength generally came from the carbon content in the steel. New steel has a much, much lower carbon content. It’s usually quarter to maybe a fifth as much as the old steel.

We have to get strength from doing something else. The old steel, you could use the old blacksmith approach where you could heat it up and then stick it in water and it gets stronger. Even if you’d heat it up and you air cooled it, in general case, it got the same strength or slightly stronger because you cooled it down faster than in the mill.

In the modern steels, we use grain size, very fine grain size, very fine grain structure, in order to have the higher steels. The old carbon steels probably went up to about X60, and the new steels would do X70 and X80. In some cases, individual pieces of steel can get up to X90.

The problem with the new steels, because they’re not using carbon at the higher temperature when it formed perlite at the higher temperature, which is the iron carbide structure, is rolled at lower temperatures in order to preserve the very fine grain size, grain structure.

If we heat that up again, then we lose the grain structure and the rolling load that’s been trapped in the pipe. That means that if we reheat it, it’s metastable. The structure that provides the strength is there when it stays in low temperature below about twice the boiling point of water when you think about it.

That means when we weld it, we have to be careful. One of the reasons it has less carbon in it is because carbon is part of the carbon-equivalent equation. The higher the carbon equivalent, usually the higher the chance of cracking the steel when you’re welding it.

They dropped the carbon content down and they had to find how to get the same strength and even increase it. They do this with a controlled program in the rolling mill. They squeeze it a lot more and they cool it rapidly in order to trap the structure. That’s why I call it a metastable structure.

When you weld it, the weld has alloys in it, so it solidifies and it has the strength to overmatch the plate. The weld normally has some inclusions and porosity in it and it’s strain-sensitive. You want the load to be in the weaker part, which is in the plate because it’s more forgiving and it can stretch a lot more.

The problem we have now is the heat-affected zone is we’ve taken the strength out. It tends to stretch, but it’s not very wide, so it’s in effect strain-sensitive as well.

When we do the welding now, and we try to do it in a narrow gap so that we control the heating and cooling and keep it as quick as possible to try and do the least amount of damage in the heat-affected zone. It also means you don’t have to put in as many passes, so you can do the welding faster, too.

Russell: I want to unpack this a little bit just to make sure I’m understanding what you’re saying. If I’m dealing with an older steel, what you said is I can add strength by heating it and cooling it.

Keith: Yep.

Russell: I know this is not something you would do in practice. I’m asking this as a theoretical question. If I had a spot on the pipe that I wanted to build the strength up in, could I heat that spot, cool that spot, and have that strength be increased in that spot that I heated and cooled?

Keith:

Yes. One of the best examples are hard spots. When they were rolling the plate, in some cases, parts of the plate would get cooled a lot faster because water fell on it sometimes from the roof and sometimes other places.

You would end up with a circular area, which would be quenched faster than the steel around it because the rest of it was essentially air cooled. Then the properties around the perimeter of that are quite different from one side to the other side of the perimeter. That generally is where the strain happens and you start to get cracks there.

That’s part of the problem with the hard spot.

Russell: That makes sense. As a matter of practice, that’s never been a repair method, going out and heating the steel to try and work out a hard spot by heating it and cooling it as part of the construction?

Keith: No. We’ve never tried to do that. We usually just cut the thing out and put it in a pop because it’s much easier and quicker to do. If you’re talking about something else like welding a ship, if you’ve got a dent in, say, part of it, you can heat that dent and take the dent out by using heat. That kind of thing.

Russell: Because the steel will become workable.

Keith: It’s not maybe the best example, but that’s one way of doing it. You heat the steel up so that it expands and the rest of the steel around it doesn’t. Then when it cools down, it shrinks and it tends to take the dents out.

Russell: What that means is that if I’m going to maintain a pipe, any kind of mitigation or corrective action, then I need to understand the kind of steel I have because the method I’m going to use to repair or improve strength or whatever is going to be dependent on the pipe I’m actually working on.

Keith:

Yeah. If you’re going to put a sleeve on it, for example, and a type B sleeve, then the circumferential welds around the outside of the sleeve are to keep it…there’s a pressure-containing one.

If you’re putting new steel on top of older steel, then you want to make sure that you’re doing in such a way that you’re not overstressing the carrier pipe into the solidification and stuff.

Russell: I think that would also mean that the risk of a steel sleeve on older pipe would be less than the risk of doing a type B on newer pipe because of the issues around the weld.

Keith: Yeah. You’re trading off with a newer pipe, you’re trading off the cracking ability with the amount of give that you’ve got or strength that you’re losing when you’re heating it.

Russell: Which is why composite repairs are becoming more appealing. I’m asking that. I mean to frame that as a question.

Keith:

Yes, composite repairs are a really good tool if used properly, but in the case of a B sleeve, I would never use a composite. Composites, when the internal pressure is over about 500, the pressure, if it gets in between the composite and the pipe, can work its way down the adhesive and out the end eventually with time.

For lower pressure for distribution, yeah, fine, but some distributions get up around the pressure, too. If you’re going to glue something on the outside, then you have to look at the whole thing. If you’re going to use it to support wall loss, yes, composites are really good.

I remember seeing them back in the mid-’80s. I, as a welding engineer, go, “What am I looking at this piece of junk for?” When you think about it, yeah, it’s a good one. Then I got in charge of the program for the clock springs. [laughs]

Russell: I know Chris Alexander, who he’s a guru in the whole composite repair world. He talks about his early days as a young engineer being out there trying to sell that stuff to these hardcore, old integrity engineers, and he’s like, “You’re not putting that glue and string on my pipe.” [laughs]

Keith: I know. He was a contractor of mine in those days.

Russell: [laughs]

Russell: Small world, right?

Keith: I was trying to sell composite pipe to the steel guys, and I go, “Do you want to get like half the price or zero percent of the price? Don’t you think we just want to wrap this on top of steel and we can use it at higher pressures?” They go, “Oh, never thought of it that way.” [laughs]

Russell: Exactly. I think for me, the takeaway of all this is that the risks of repairing and welding on the newer steels and the older steels are quite different.

Keith: Yep. You just need to keep it in mind. You want to keep the thermal cycle as short in duration as possible. That usually goes with sequencing your welds and also making sure there are smaller volumes with a faster cooling rate.

Russell: It also means that the post inspection of the weld is critical as well to make sure that you got the results you were looking for. Particularly on the newer pipes where we have the potential of weakening the steel in the heated zone where you create an area for the stress or the strain to collect, that’s got to be looked at carefully.

Keith: Some ways, it’s easy to use gas metal arc or fusion flux core in order to do your welding, or then with a stick weld because stick welds tend to be a lot bigger and with a lot more heat. People like to stick weld a lot. Even their weld prep is really big, so you get a lot of heat going in there.

Russell: Sick weld is easier in practice. It’s easier to find that equipment, it’s easier to find those guys. It’s just easier, but there’s issues with it.

Keith:

I would prefer to use it as a welding engineer, but most people like to have30 miles of pipe before they use it for construction. I would use it for repairs as well.

You can set it up and do it in about the same amount of time, but you’re putting in less weld volume as well in many cases, especially if you’re joining pipe. You’re going to get your speed back then.

Russell: What would you want integrity engineers to take away from this conversation about old versus new steel and how it needs to be thought of and managed beyond just the welding issues?

Keith:

Some of the older steels were also rolled differently, so you get a coarser surface on the pipe. You may get differences on the surface. You’d get some corrosion, which would show up, then you wouldn’t see in the finer structure of the newer pipe as well.

The problem with that is the coatings are so much better now. Generally in Europe, for example, they use three layer rather than a single layer. They’ll use polyethylene or polyurethane on the outside for damage, but fusion bond on the inside.

Generally, we use fusion bond in North America. If we’re going to pull it through, we’ll put concrete or something else on it if it’s horizontally drilled. That kind of stuff.

In some cases, the coarser structure makes it easier for some of the corrosion to take place, whether it’s on the inside or the outside. Most of the pipe these days is coated on both sides except where we do the girth welds so that the coating doesn’t get in the way of contaminating the welds, essentially.

Russell: Interesting.

Keith: You’re dealing with thinner wall for newer pipe too in many cases as well, even with different class locations.

Russell: The other thing you’re saying is the newer steels tend to have smoother surfaces. Consequently, they bond better with coatings than the older steels, potentially. That’s another consideration.

Keith:

We sandblast them all now too, so they get rid of that part. The older steels would have the iron oxide from when they were being rolled on the outside. That would be a different layer. They tend to be porous, so they sometimes help to pull together and bond things.

Yeah, the surface would be coarser and you could get something about the size of your thumb, which would have more alloy in it compared to the one next to it. That would give you a corrosion differential right there if the whole thing was wet. That’s the kind of stuff that you might not see on the new stuff.

Russell: Most of the new stuff, it’s factory-coated. They don’t coat it in the field anymore, particularly with some of the more advanced.

Keith: Except at the welds.

Russell: Exactly. That tends to mitigate some of that risk or problem, I suppose.

Keith: It depends if the water doesn’t get underneath your coating. There are a variety of things. You can get holes punched in the coating for either mechanical damage or sometimes shorts from electrical railways and stuff like that, too.

Russell:

Yeah. When you start getting into the whole corrosion and cathodic protection conversation, that’s just as complicated as what we’re talking about in the metallurgy. I’ve done a fair number of episodes on that subject, so I think I have a notional understanding of it.

I think one of the things that for me, not being a metallurgist, not really being an interior guy, but one of the things I think is interesting for me in this is just understanding that the newer pipe is stronger, less ductile, which means that it’s going to handle more load or pressure, but it’s going to be more subject to cracking versus bending. Is that right?

Keith:

The older one would be more forgiving. It’s probably a better way. This one is already really at a high stress. To get it up to where you start to get problems, it takes less effort.

If it’s going to bend because of the ground that it’s in for a variety of reasons, then you can’t bend it as much. If you’re at the top of the hill and the bottom of the hill, it’s essentially pinned.

If the hill’s moving, then it doesn’t take as much movement of the hill to push against it and cause problems either to buckle it or do something else. Buckle it at the bottom or stretch it at the top, or if the pipe’s holding up the hill, it doesn’t blow out quite as far.

Russell:

Using what I know from what I did in my education was something is high ductility, it’s more forgiving. It’ll bend, it’ll move without losing strength, where typically things that are low ductile will have much higher strength, but they don’t move much. If they move much at all, then they could have problems.

It’s always an interesting question when you’re specifying, do I need something that’s high strength, low ductility, or maybe a little less strength, but more ductility, more forgiving? Then OK, well, I’m building a pipeline system, and wouldn’t I build it all out of the same thing?

Keith: Yeah. You usually get bulk discounts.

Russell: Exactly. It’s like which challenge am I picking to live with?

Keith:

You’ve got all the other constraints because like we talked about offline, you got to move it around from wherever you bought it to wherever you’re going to build it. Then you want to speed up the welding too, so a thinner wall is much better.

If you can cut the weld volume down by doing narrow gap, then that cuts that cost down, and all of those kinds of things.

Russell:

Whenever I’m doing construction, doing the same way over, and over, and over again gets efficiency and probably gets consistency in the outcome, versus having to do bunch of specialized stuff.

Look, great second conversation. We’re going to have Keith back for one more. We’re going to talk about determining fitness of service for pipe. Come back next week. [laughs] We’ll be talking about that with Keith.

Keith: Thank you very much.

Russell: Hey. Again, thanks a bunch, Keith.

Keith: Thank you very much for having me on.

Russell: I really appreciate you.

Keith: As you noticed that we sometimes go down the odd rabbit hole as we’re talking. Buttonhole me if you see me out there, and we can discuss some other things that you may have.

Russell: As Keith mentioned in the last episode, he will be at PPIM. He’ll be the dude in a bow tie.

Keith: Thank you.

Russell: [laughs]

Russell: We’re going to have one more conversation with Keith in this series. I’m looking forward to that, Keith.

Keith: It’s fun. I enjoy these, too.

Russell:

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

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Russell:

If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, or if you’d like to be a guest, please let me know either 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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