Integrity management will stay at the forefront of pipeline operators’ agendas in 2007. Additional capacity will still be sought. New projects will be announced and expansions planned. But the pursuit of growth will itself hinge increasingly on the ability to demonstrate sound integrity management.
Pipeline projects have long been greeted with suspicion or mistrust by the communities they affect. Concern and public awareness increased after BP’s early August discovery of “unexpectedly severe corrosion” in its Alaskan pipeline system. The discovery resulted from stepped-up inspection following a Mar. 2 crude oil spill of 200,000 gal on another segment of BP-operated pipeline on Alaska’s North Slope.
It is the unexpected nature of this corrosion that has led to public questioning, editorials, and regulatory investigation about not only BP’s problems but also pipeline safety in general. Pipeline operators thus will spend much time and energy reexamining their systems in 2007, strengthening and codifying their integrity-management programs, and making the results of these efforts public.
The effort will produce at least two benefits: 1) assurance of the current and future integrity of existing systems and 2) the public and political goodwill necessary to expand capacity. In the first instance, the issue is one of spending money now on inspection, monitoring, and administration or spending it later on repairs, remediation, and possibly litigation. The expenses involved in the second instance, stemming from the costs of extending project timelines, are no less concrete. Companies offering assessment, monitoring, and mitigation products and services to pipeline operators have already seen an upswing in their business.
Although paying for these services on systems that seem to have nothing wrong might compromise immediate financial results, the increased pipeline-integrity activity shows that many operators are taking a longer-term view.
A new and politically reoriented US Congress soon will convene. The previous session renewed and expanded the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act based at least in part on gas pipeline operating companies’ testimony that “the primary benefit of the program is the comprehensive knowledge [we] must acquire about the condition of [our] pipelines” and that “for some operators, the [legislation’s] integrity-management program [had] prompted such assessments for the first time.” Annually reported pipeline incidents in the US are declining. An increased focus on integrity management in the year ahead will extend this trend and keep individual companies from facing surprises like those encountered by BP in 2006.
