Advanced real time and long term monitoring of transportation pipelines

A key factor for the sustainable development of oil&gas industry is the remote monitoring of integrity and reliability of transportation pipelines. In order to mitigate the risk associated to third party interference (TPI) risks and to minimize the environment exposure, it is possible to deploy a Multipoint Acoustic Sensing (MAS) technology which makes use of multi sensors placed at discrete distances along the pipeline. Any interaction with the pipe generates acoustic waves that are guided within the fluid (gas, oil, products or water) for long distances, providing information on the source event and on the “transmission” channel. Acoustic propagation is mainly governed by both absorption coefficient and sound speed, which in turn are functions of the pipe, fluid and surrounding medium system. These features have been analyzed by processing real-time data collected with a proprietary MAS system (e-vpms™) on fluid transportation pipelines, in different operational and flow service conditions, producing exhaustive sets of TPI actions, leak trials and tracking pig inspections. The paper presents original procedures for real-time monitoring, as well as for long term supervision and advance intervention planning.