UBCO target pipelines

Photo: UBCO

With the recent announcement that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion received the thumbs up from the National Energy Board, UBCO is studying ways to prevent pipeline failures.

The Okanagan campus recently completed a study which resulted in an engineering model that could help oil and gas companies determine which areas of their pipeline network could be prone to corrosion and should receive priority for integrity testing.

“There are over 40,000 kilometers of pipelines operating in Canada alone and deciding how best to schedule and complete testing on those lines can be a daunting task,” said associate professor Solomon Tesfamariam of UBC’s Okanagan campus.

“We believe that inputting the appropriate data into this model will allow companies to identify and test the areas of their pipelines that would be most likely to fail.”

The model combines numerous corrosion and pressure failure assessments, which to date have been largely considered in isolation.

As part of his ongoing research, Tesfamariam is now working on expanding the model to include external, environmental factors that could result in weak sections of pipelines being prematurely compromised and their contents spilling into the environment.

“At this stage, it is well known to researchers that factors such as climate change and earthquakes that are being induced by current fracking methods are having an impact on sensitive infrastructure," Tesfamariam said.

“For the next stage of this research, we are looking at how both internal and external risk factors can be considered in tandem to give companies a better chance at predicting and mitigating risk.”

Data released by the Transportation Safety Board, states there are 37 companies that transported 216 million cubic metres of oil along 21,636 kilometres of oil pipelines in 2014.

As well, companies transported 152 billion cubic metres of natural gas along 55,982 kilometres of natural gas pipelines that same year.