JIP Composites

Joint Industry Project - Details

Addressing Root-Cause Factors Contributing to Pipeline Failures

Cyclic exposure to severe terrain-induced slugging within multi-phase gathering and water hammer events triggered by rapid shutdown of high-pressure water injection systems cause excessive axial and unbalanced buckling forces at fixed risers and bends; factors contributing to 85% of all historical failures of spooled composite pipelines.

The JIP is designed to position operators to reduce and even eliminate future failure events by quantifying operating conditions contributing to harmful detrimental multiphase flow patterns in gathering and water-injection service, and to provide guidance to position field operations teams to avoid exposure to harmful conditions.

Project Deliverables

Quantify the severity of axial and unbalanced forces for a range of terrain-induced slug flow conditions combined with a variety of installation configurations associated with historical failure events;
Create a suite of operating envelopes defining the severity of terrain-induced slugging vs frequency-of-exposure most likely to cause pipeline failures; for multi-phase production and high-pressure water injection service; and,
Publish a likelihood-of-failure model for incorporation into corporate risk assessment tools so operators can pin-point problematic pipelines for installation of pressure monitoring devices as a tool to characterize detrimental operating conditions and for evaluating the effectiveness of operating changes designed to moderate exposure to harmful conditions.