Saudi Aramco in the spotlight — Pipelines International — The international pipeline magazine

History

The beginnings of the company now known as Saudi Aramco can be traced back to 1933 when Saudi Arabia granted an oil concession to California Arabian Standard Oil Company. This allowed the company to begin prospecting for oil on Saudi Arabia’s east coast.

In 1944, the company changed its name to Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), with Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vaccum Oil (both now ExxonMobil) joining Standard Oil of California and Texaco (both now Chevron) as owners four years later. In 1973 and 1980, the Saudi Arabian Government acquired 25 per cent and then 100 per cent interest in Aramco, respectively, and finally, in 1988, Saudi Arabian Oil Company – or Saudi Aramco – was established.

Saudi Aramco and its predecessors have been a major part of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas history with discoveries including the country’s first commercial oil field at Dhahran, as well as the Safaniya and Ghawar oil fields – and the company continues to be a major industry player today.

Saudi Aramco today

The 20,000 km plus expansion of Saudi Aramco’s pipeline network, and the increase of urban development next to major pipeline corridors, has seen the company move from a time-based maintenance approach to a condition-based approach.

Saudi Aramco Pipeline Department General Manager Muhammad Ali Al-Trabulsi says “This shift in pipelines maintenance strategy led to the introduction of a risk-driven pipeline integrity management programme, which provides a continuous systematic analytical process to maintain pipeline integrity through effective risk assessment and data management. A computerised pipeline integrity management system (PIMS) is being implemented, which takes into account many factors that contribute to the risk of pipeline failure.”

Mr Al-Trabulsi says that the PIMS is expected to provide risk assessment results where major contributing factors to each risk are identified, along with the associated consequences of each risk. In addition, the system features integrity plans and assessment, data loading and alignment of management of change (MOC), and some reporting and queries.

The company also expanded its process equipment significantly from 2001–09 to support the pipeline integrity programmes of the newly installed infrastructure.

“State-of-the-art equipment was added to help in providing leading indicators for the pipeline network.”

The equipment includes remote online corrosion monitoring systems, an online pipeline monitoring system, and automation and integrity systems, inclusive of mapping and crack detection ILI tools and risk assessment applications.

Saudi Aramco sees pipeline safety as very important.

“The major gains in safety are to be made in the field of pipelines protection. Effective means to manage damage will enhance pipeline operations the most,” says Mr Al-Trabulsi.

Innovation

Mr Al-Trabulsi says “In the last ten years, Saudi Aramco has been considered a pioneer in deploying leading technologies to facilitate operations safety and to enhance the effectiveness of rehabilitation projects.”

He says that an example of this has been the company’s use of the electro-magnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) in-line inspection (ILI) tool, and a leak-detection system.

“EMAT was pioneered by Saudi Aramco in 2006 by successfully conducting the first pilot test. This technology has proven proactively to detect stress corrosion cracking and coating disbondment. As a result Saudi Aramco deployed this technology in 2008,” Mr Al-Trabulsi says.

“In addition, since 1981 Saudi Aramco has implemented in-house leak-detection functionalities on SCADA systems and studied their real-life performance.

“In the last 10 years, Saudi Aramco has developed real-time solutions for pipeline LDS that work on various communication platforms, pipeline products and operating conditions, ranging from sour gas, NGL, to cross-country large capacity crude oil pipelines.”

The Saudi Aramco pipelines’ real-time data acquisition platform — featured with high-accuracy built-in synchronisation — allows the seamless deployment of various types of leak-detection functionalities, achieving fast detection time and accurate leak location. This platform is integrated with the geographical information system (GIS) for pinpointing pipeline leaks and related alarms on maps featured with GPS coordinates at sub-meter accuracy. Saudi Aramco has also contributed to the industry by developing safe test methods and test systems for commissioning leak-detection systems.

In addition, Saudi Aramco says that the company has developed unique implementation methods for leak detection on complex pipeline networks. These are based on quantitative risk assessment methods and specific performance parameters.

R&D into the future

Saudi Aramco plans to construct approximately 1,400 km of new pipelines to aid the existing network, accommodating the planned increase of production and supply to local industries and worldwide customers.

In order to support its growing network of pipelines, the company’s Pipeline Department has an in-house technology co-ordination team in charge of facilitating technology deployment, and innovative solutions.

“Through its research and development facilities, Saudi Aramco continues to explore the benefits of improving the efficiency of upstream and downstream operations and processes,” says Mr Al-Trabulsi.

“These efforts are growing to address the top challenges we are facing in pipelines.”

Research fields being undertaken by the company include:

• Bacteria control in pipelines;
• Corrosion monitoring;
• Utilising robotics;
• Structural integrity; and,
• Black powder mitigation and removal.

In particular, Mr Al-Trabulsi says that Saudi Aramco’s research on black powder has attracted international interest in defining and finding practical solutions for the problem.

Other challenges that the company has identified as potential areas of improvement include:

• Design criteria to address safety, considering the increase of urban development;
• Construction practices that narrow the chance of project-related difficulties, such as welding defects, weather impacts on the project schedule, and commissioning;
• Corrosion monitoring and control, bacteria growth, low-flow corrosion, and water content or products off-spec impacting pipeline steel;
• Defect-free coating systems, especially for harsh environments, such as high water table and thrust-boring work;
• Material specifications that consider crack resistance;
• Cathodic protection monitoring; and,
• Deployment of state-of-the-art ILI technologies for non-piggable pipelines.

• Mr Al-Trabulsi says “We have started exploring solutions to these challenges, and believe that sharing knowledge is a key to success, and therefore a group of Saudi Aramco professionals are always available at international pipeline events.”

Image caption: On 20 May 2008, Saudi Aramco celebrated its 75th anniversary with a visit from King Abdullah; and, The Shaybah Oil Field.

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