Inspection and monitoring systems subsea pipelines: A review paper

Abstract

One of the largest movers of the world economy is the oil and gas industry. The industry generates billions of barrels of oil to match more than half the world’s energy demands. Production of energy products at such a massive scale is supported by the equally massive oil and gas infrastructure sprawling around the globe. Especially characteristic of the industry are vast networks of pipelines that traverse tens of thousands of miles of land and sea to carry oil and gas from the deepest parts of the earth to faraway destinations. With such lengths come increased chances for damage, which can have disastrous consequences owing to the hazardous substances typically carried by pipelines. Subsea pipelines in particular face increased risk due to the typically harsher environments, the difficulty of accessing deepwater pipelines, and the possibility of sea currents spreading leaked oil across a wide area. The opportunity for research and engineering to overcome the challenge of subsea inspection and monitoring is tremendous and the progress in this area is continuously generating exciting new developments that may have far reaching benefits far outside of subsea pipeline inspection and monitoring. Thus, this review covers the most often used subsea inspection and monitoring technologies as well as their most recent developments and future trends.

A Review of the Real-Time Monitoring of Fluid-Properties in Tubular Architectures for Industrial Applications

“…For example, subsea pipelines exposed to high pressure from the water depths, corrosive seawater, and sometimes a significant temperature difference between transferred fluid and surrounded water temperature generating stress on pipes walls increase the risk of failures and monitoring challenges. The review paper [ 46 ] discusses the challenges for subsea pipelines and addressed technologies for monitoring applications, including magnetic flux leakages (MFL), eddy current, vibrational sensors, guided wave testing (GWT), fiber optics, and radiography. However, most of the efforts have been made for monitoring pipe conditions, and not the fluid characteristics within the pipes.…”

External Corrosion Detection of Oil Pipelines Using Fiber Optics

“…In the past four years, numerous in-depth review papers have been published [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] that show inspection techniques commonly used by the O&G industry for external and internal corrosion detection of O&G pipelines.…”

Low-Cost and High-Efficiency Method for Detecting Vertical Bends of Subsea Pipelines

“…Typically, harsh environments and the difficulty of accessing underwater pipelines make the inspection and monitoring of subsea pipelines a challenging task [9], [10]. Underwater robots, such as ROVs and AUVs, can observe and find any bending deformations of subsea pipelines through acoustic or optical imaging [11], [12].…”