Pipelines can suffer simultaneous flaws through the existence of cracks, corrosion and dents in the same location. When in-line inspection (ILI) technologies detect those flaws, it can be difficult and time consuming to identify which are coincident with each other. Doing so requires aligning, matching and overlaying data from multiple ILI runs using different technologies, sometimes from multiple years.
PII Pipeline Solutions, a GE Oil & Gas and Al Shaheen joint venture, recently added a Coincident Feature Assessment Service (CFAS) to its suite of inspection software to help customers identify coincident cracks, dents, corrosion and other anomalies across multiple ILI runs.
CFAS saves operators time by providing a consolidated pipe-listing report that summarizes features from separate ILI runs and highlights the ones that are coincident and, therefore, may be interacting to pose a problem. CFAS offers file conversion, alignment and matching of features from separate ILI runs. Any ILI vendor or ILI technology can perform the ILI runs, making CFAS vendor-agnostic and more flexible for operators.