GE Energy's New SmartScan Pipeline Tool Helps Take'Un' Out Of Unpiggable

摘要

GE Energy''s pipeline services operation has suc-cessfully launched its first SmartScan™ tool, a flexible inspection system designed to help the oil and gas industry overcome a longtime obstacle: the in-line corrosion inspection of "unpig-gable" pipelines. Inline inspections are a primary, often preferred, method for identifying corrosion defects that could eventually lead to costly, unintentional pipeline releases. However, operators have been unable to perform these inspections on a third of the world''s installed transmission pipelines — or 340,000 miles (540,000 km), because the pipelines were not originally designed to accommodate the passage of inline tools. As a result, operators have been limited to either using less-quantitative techniques (i.e., direct assessment or hydro-testing methods) or having to perform substantially more expensive pipeline modifications.