Energy pipeline tech: Digital technologies can increase oil and gas safety standards

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  Quantumrun Foresight
• March 8, 2022

Oil and gas pipelines play a crucial role in transporting needed supplies over fast distances to drive national economies and global trade. However, these pipelines are a major source of environmental and operational risk if they are not properly maintained or operated. Smart technologies could it make far easier to protect the environment while lowering pipeline maintenance and monitoring costs worldwide. 

Pipeline tech context

Smart pipelines are becoming a critical part of the energy industry’s plans to tackle the challenges of maintenance, monitoring, and optimization. Pipelines equipped with digital technologies allow companies to remotely track, surveil, and control them while making communications within their operations more effective and impactful. The sooner problems can be detected, the quicker they can be addressed, decreasing the risk of catastrophic failures that could significantly damage the surrounding environment.
 
Ever since the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the largest marine oil spill in history, energy companies have acknowledged the necessity of early detection systems, hastening their development and adoption within the industry. These systems can detect corrosion, a leading cause of pipeline breakages, and pressure changes in oil flow rates, alerting managers and operators that there may be a problem. Pipeline corrosion and leaking, which went unnoticed for five days, led to a toxic oil spill in Alaska at a separate BP facility in 2006 that caused extensive environmental damage and led to the company paying a $25 million penalty in 2011. In 2021, oil and gas businesses spent on average $589 million on surface pipelines and facility expenditures, $463 million on downhole tube expenses, and $320 million on covering corrosion costs, according to a NACE study published in the same year. 

Disruptive impact

The increased use of smart technologies within the energy industry, especially within the oil and gas sectors, could allow energy companies to better monitor and prevent system failures that could cause extensive environmental and economic damage. In addition, such innovations could enable energy operators to reduce their operating costs while increasing the effectiveness of their maintenance systems. Lawmakers can devise and pass legislation that makes it mandatory for energy companies to share non-proprietary pipeline and facility data with industry bodies and government departments to monitor the oil and gas sectors. 

Companies may further explore using non-metallics when constructing their pipeline infrastructure, as non-metallics may be less prone to corrosion, more durable, weigh less, and cheaper to build than traditional metal-based pipelines. Pipelines becoming more efficient through the use of non-metallics could also assist in lowering carbon emissions, as less energy would be required to pump oil and gas from one location to another.  

Implications of smart pipelines

Wider implications of data-driven platforms becoming a critical part of energy companies’ pipelines may include: 

• Fewer gas and oil spills and leaks, which will significantly benefit the environment long term. 
• Oil and gas industry safety standards being updated and changed to make these smart technologies mandatory in most markets worldwide. Some governments may fine/penalize oil and gas companies for future spills that smart tech could have prevented.
• Monitoring tech applied to pipelines in Western nations being applied across the developing world where most new drilling is being sourced. 
• Some governments becoming more open to proposals from oil and gas companies to drill in protected areas due to the industry’s increased use of digital safety mechanisms and the resulting improved safety record.
• Vendors of non-metallic pipeline materials and technology experiencing more business inquiries from oil and gas companies interested in changing the nature of their oil and gas pipelines. 

Questions to comment on

• If oil and gas pipelines can be made safer through smart monitoring technology and using non-metallics in their construction, would you be open to these pipelines being placed in urban areas (or even environmentally sensitive areas) if it lowered energy prices?
• What penalties and obligations should governments impose on oil and gas companies when a major leak or spill occurs?