STATUS OF U.S. IN-LINE INSPECTION STANDARDS

摘要

The U.S. gas and liquid pipeline industry and its regulators have been working to improve pipeline safety and integrity through a pipeline integrity management effort since 1999. The Office of Pipeline Safety of the U.S. Department of Transportation issued integrity management regulations for liquid pipelines in 2001 and issued similar regulations for gas pipelines at the end of 2003. The Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS), also issued regulations for Operator Qualification in 1999 requiring personnel that perform certain tasks to be qualified to perform those tasks. The integrity Management Programs require extensive inspections of pipelines and the primary method for these inspections is of course In-Line Inspection (ILI). These inspections are critical to the safety and integrity of pipelines and the requirements are reflected in ASME B31.8S Integrity Management for Gas Pipelines. However, neither the inspection systems nor the personnel operating the systems and analyzing and reducing the data have to be qualified under existing standards or regulations. Industry and the Regulators agreed to embark on the development of consensus standards that would address the qualifications of both the ILI Systems and the ILI Personnel that run the systems and evaluate the inspection data. This paper describes the 3 standards that have been developed to obtain "qualified" In-Line Inspection results: API 1163: In-Line Inspection Systems Qualification ASNT ILI-PQ-2003: In-Line Inspection Personnel Qualification NACE RP0102-2002: Standard Recommended Practice, In-Line Inspection of Pipelines The interrelationship of the 3 standards and how to utilize them will be discussed. (See figure 1). The latest changes to the standards and their acceptance by industry will also be described.