Panorama of the Strategy for Managing the Risk Created by the Weather-Related and Outside Force Threat in VIT-Ecopetrol

Abstract

The realization of the weather-related and outside force threat has historically caused losses of containment with their subsequent social, environmental, economic and image consequences for Ecopetrol. The zones in which these phenomena occur are characterized by the interaction of transmission systems with an environment that is complex in its topographical, geological-geomorphological and climatic conditions, and because of the anthropic impact of changes in land use. In Ecopetrol’s office of the Vice-president for Transportation Logistics (VIT-Ecopetrol), a threat management strategy has been proposed that seeks to minimize the vulnerability of the pipelines to processes that can impact on operating efficiency or that, because of their degree of complexity, require comprehensive management in order to guarantee operation at tolerable levels of risk. This article presents a panorama of the work performed with regard to the validation of the threat and risk levels of the assets, the internal analyses performed by geotechnical professionals for formulating the plans for the management of assets and the accompaniment of such in order to achieve the continuous operation of the transmission systems.