Abdul Razzaq Al-Shamari

Internal Corrosion Management of Crude Pipelines

Kuwait currently produces about 3 million barrels of crude oil per day and has a large pipeline network system for handling its oil and associated products (condensate, low pressure and high pressure gas, as well as produced and effluent waters). The total length of the pipeline network is about 4790 Km consisting of API 5L Grade-B carbon steel ranging in diameter from 100 mm to 1830 mm. The Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is responsible for the corrosion and integrity management of the pipeline network system which involves: Internal Corrosion Monitoring to assess the internal corrosion status of the pipelines including the occurrence of microbial influenced corrosion; external corrosion protection with the help of coatings and cathodic protection, and periodic intelligent and cleaning pigging operations for internal corrosion assessment and cleaning.The present paper focuses on the internal corrosion management of the export crude segment of the pipeline network system which is very important for a healthy economy. The internal corrosion monitoring protocol includes, online corrosion monitoring, cleaning pigging and intelligent pigging. Bacteria counts’ trending is also included as part of protocol. Some anomalies between the results obtained from corrosion trends, cleaning pigging results and intelligent pigging are highlighted and a sound engineering explanation is attempted to explain these apparent anomalies.Copyright