June 2024, Vol. 251, No. 6
Tech Notes
Technote: Enhancing Pipeline Safety Through Automation
By Olivia Kabell, Associate Editor
(P&GJ) — In his role as global leader for Honeywell’s LNG & Midstream automation business, Chris Jones has had a first-hand view of the increasing importance of automation as a tool for safely operating pipelines.
In a recent discussion with P&GJ, Jones emphasized the significance of these technologies along with PHMSA and operators’ combined responsibility for regulating and maintaining safe pipeline operations, the future of pipelines in the energy transition and the general dynamic of the industry as a whole.
Honeywell, he said, is investing in taking “digital technologies to supplement things that humans have been doing through manual inspections or analysis.”
In an era where data is becoming increasingly critical, Jones sees a key work area in turning a “data overload” into an “information rich stream” for operators.
As the discussion shifted to the industry’s overall dynamic, Jones highlighted the role of regulation — both the kind self-imposed by operators and the kind overseen by PHMSA. Specifically, he noted that, “[while] PHMSA is certainly one of the key regulators that we see … many of the pipelines that have been added recently are not under PHMSA regulations … [and] have not fallen under their jurisdiction.”
To that point, he mentioned that the current dynamic is comprised of operators “reporting incidents to PHMSA rather than PHMSA doing the physical inspection and enforcement themselves.” For U.S. regulators, this is a trend connected to a culture around and requirement for self-reporting, Jones said.
Part of the picture are new technologies, such as the company’s Rebellion CGI camera (Figure 1, 2). To quote the company:
“Pipeline operators are required to implement leak detection across the entire pipeline asset — including nodes such as compressors, pumping, terminal, pigging, injection, block valve and so on. No single leak detection technology can do the entire asset. Newer technology such as Honeywell’s Rebellion GCI camera can perform leak detection across several square kilometres/miles of asset and right-of-way to ensure total coverage and compliance. Rebellion provides advanced real-time visual monitoring analytics.”
Yet, as with every industry, there are almost always opportunities for improvement when it comes to safety. In Jones’ view, some of the monitoring methods in the industry are “relatively archaic.”
One example he gave was aerial pipeline inspections, where a pilot in a small aircraft will do an inspection from the air. “It is simply a pilot looking out the window of a Cessna aircraft saying, ‘I see an issue, or I don’t,’ from the air there.”
He argues that there are much better technologies to do the same thing, and while Honeywell is a provider for some of those services, he pointed out that these technologies are widely available. One example is fiberoptic cables, which are run down pipelines and will alert operators if, for example, there is some excavation equipment nearby.
“If there’s even a person walking around, it would alert [operators about] that.” Compared with once-a-day visual inspection from an aircraft, Jones said, this digital technology can let operators know of an immediate issue.
However, shifting to this technology isn’t without drawbacks; Jones did point out that implementing it can be very expensive. Even so, he mentioned that pipeline operators do have the opportunity to recoup some costs by reducing false shutdowns.
If a pilot sees something and the company thinks there might be an issue, “immediately that pipeline company will shut their pipeline down and then they’ll go investigate it. If it’s a non-issue, they just had a false shutdown and that’s that.”
Of course, shutdowns and startup processes present their own safety risks, Jones cautioned. Typically, shutdown and startup processes are where incidents happen, and “…by digitizing some of the safety inspection and integrity inspection, you get both a better inspection [with] real-time data, and you will have fewer false shutdown events.” The benefits, of course, are evident: reduced risk presented by startup and shutdown, as well as reduced downtime.
Another dynamic within the industry is one connected to the future of pipelines, in the context of the energy transition. Jones noted that his company has forecasted that the miles of pipeline could be shrinking, rather than growing, across the country.
“If we think about an economy of energy transition, we’re moving from an oil and gas economy to one where we have more solar, wind, electricity—renewable sources that are not…relying on hydrocarbons.”
General concerns about the safety of pipelines represent another dynamic at play within the industry, and Jones was quick to acknowledge the fierce rallying cry of “not in our backyard” that often characterizes the public protest against pipeline construction and activity. Despite this, he emphasized the safety benefits of pipelines compared with other transportation methods for oil and gas.
“Generally, pipelines are safer, because the next best alternative are giant trucks on the highway or railcars on railroads. And then we have spills and traffic accidents and those sorts of things,” he added.
Statistically, pipelines are safer and more environmentally friendly, yet they still receive a great deal of protests from the public. The solution, Jones suggested, is educating the public on these safety statistics and measures — especially when compared to the higher accident rates of the next-best options.
The current and coming dynamics of the industry remained a topic of interest, as Jones highlighted two major dynamics he felt would be coming soon. The first, he predicted, would be a move towards hydrogen, specifically green hydrogen, as a low carbon energy source. The second is carbon capture and sequestration.
“So, we’re seeing in the pipeline industry a dynamic to transport more hydrogen and to transport more carbon dioxide,” Jones said. “So that’s probably where we’ll see growth in the industry.”
Even so, he warned that hydrogen presents a lot of concerns for safety and infrastructure regarding pipelines. “…hydrogen as a chemical does really funny things to the metallurgy…[and] if you switch that [natural gas] to start transporting hydrogen, the integrity issues of corrosion or brittleness or cracking can really increase.”
The industry response thus far has been to blend in hydrogen, according to Jones, and separate the chemical out at its final pipeline destination.
“But what we would say is [that] all of these things we’ve been studying around pipeline integrity, actually the concerns are starting to go up because hydrogen has so many historical unknowns around its impact.” Part of the issue, he noted, is that hydrogen is a very small molecule and subsequently, “we say it’s a very leaky molecule. It will leak at seals and flanges that other chemicals never leaked out [of] before.” Further, with hydrogen’s explosive nature, pipeline safety and integrity technologies are critical for any transition to the low-carbon fuel.
However, industrial pipelines are only part of the story; Jones notes something that’s “just kind of gone under the radar is when you get to the end of a pipeline, and you go to the consumer.” For personal consumers to use gas in their homes, it is necessary for that gas to leave the industrial pipeline and go into a residential network, which he stressed have “much, much less regulation over them.”
After all, he pointed out, if a residential gas pipeline network suffers a leak, the responsibility to report it falls to the homeowner or resident, rather than an overseeing body, like local distribution companies.
While these local distributors are technically the responsible parties to evaluate residential pipeline corrosion or leaks, Jones reiterated that these pipelines are “…something that’s really had less attention from a safety perspective…and while we’ve put a lot of focus on the industry, we haven’t quiet followed it down the value chain to the consumer side.”
In fact, a majority of the responsibility load doesn’t actually fall on PHMSA at all, Jones said, noting their jurisdiction covers only about 4-10% of some 400,000 miles of pipelines. The fact that the remaining percentage of pipeline length are made up by newer pipelines make it all the more critical that “…operators become quite self-regulated and that they are driving the safety and integrity programs that protect those [pipelines], rather than some government entity.”
Though Jones stressed the company’s focus largely being centered in the U.S., he noted that their technologies are applicable for international pipelines as well.
“One of the areas that we’re contacted frequently outside of the U.S. is about what we would call tampering of pipelines. To just put it in layman’s terms, it’s theft,” he said.
Siphoning oil from pipelines, as Jones pointed out, presents not only the issue of stolen products but also increased risk for a major safety incident. Here, Jones stressed, some of the earlier-discussed digital monitoring technologies can allow operators to detect tampering more quickly, though this technology is, again, expensive.
Still, it is an area of concern for pipeline operators, as Jones highlights: Many pipelines lack fencing or even natural barriers to approach them, “so when you have scenarios where individuals are maliciously trying to touch and get into a pipeline — or even steal products — that is a growing area where pipeline companies are having to protect themselves.”
While Honeywell individually seems to anticipate a continued shift to self-regulated pipelines, as suggested by its products and technologies, the overall trend of the industry seems to corroborate this estimation. The increasing number of pipelines that do not fall directly under PHMSA’s oversight represent a growing need for self-regulation to ensure safe, economical and environmentally sound operations — regulation that will largely come down to operators.
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