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Home » Blog » Power and Energy
10 Jan 2015| Posted by Morris | In Power and Energy
Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), the nation’s dominant producer of oil and gas, has earmarked an estimated $500 million towards the modernisation of its mammoth network of flowlines — surface pipelines that carry hydrocarbon fluids from wells to processing facilities.
The investment is a key part of the majority Omani government-owned company’s ‘Spill Prevention Strategy’ — a multiyear programme calling for the replacement of ageing pipeline and flowline infrastructure with more durable and largely leak-proof pipes.
That effort is primarily aimed at tackling ‘pinhole leaks’ in the approximately 20,000 km long network of pipelines and flowlines that form the backbone of PDO’s massive hydrocarbon infrastructure. Spills and seepages from these pinhole leaks were blamed on spillages amounting to 290 tonnes of crude lost from the company’s distribution during the first half of 2014, according to PDO.
In tandem with the pipeline replacement strategy, PDO is also pursuing an extensive corrosion management plan to keep pipes from being eaten away by hazardous liquids transported through the network. Likewise, improved material selection is seen as the answer to increasingly sour and water-wet operating conditions in some parts of its concession.
In PDO’s Oil North Directorate, allocations towards the replacement of bare carbon flowlines have soared from a budgeted $15 million to currently around $68 million a year, says PDO. The current programme entails the replacement of all impacted carbon steel flowlines within five years, with completion targeted by 2018, meaning a total of $338 million is earmarked to be spent.
Pipeline replacement includes the installation of fusion bonded epoxy (FBE) internal coatings which in combination are expected to yield a life span of around 20 years, compared with the current seven, the company stated in the Sustainability Report.