Bureau Veritas Shares Practical Experience in Integrity Management to Take Oil and Gas Pipeline Safety Management to the Next Level in the New Era

On April 20-21, 2021, the 7th China Technical Exchange Conference of Oil and Gas Pipeline Integrity Management & the Annual Meeting of Pipeline Integrity Management Technology Expert Committee was held in Beijing. The event was jointly hosted by the Petroleum Storage & Transportation Committee of China Petroleum Society, the Oil and Gas Storage and Transportation Specialty Standardization Committee of the Petroleum Industry Standardization Technical Committee, the Asset Integrity Management Department of the China Oil & Gas Pipeline Network Corporation, the Technical Information Department of the China Oil & Gas Piping Network Corporation, and China University of Petroleum-Beijing.

Experts from the petroleum and petrochemical industry gathered together to summarize and exchange the latest developments in theoretical research, technological progresses and achievements in the field of pipeline integrity technology since the last annual meeting, discuss ways to break the bottlenecks in the implementation of pipeline integrity management, share the best practices in the integrity management business, and provide advises on the development plan for the 14th Five-Year Plan period, with a view to help deepen the all-around applications of the integrity management technology and take the safety management of oil and gas pipelines to the next level in the new era.

There have always been many challenges facing the safe operation of oil and gas pipelines, and the accidents occurred over recent years have revealed several problems, including defects in the pipe body, geological hazards, and third-party damage. As the size and distribution of oil and gas storage and transportation facilities increase, so do the safety hazards. In 2020, China built about 5,081 km of new oil and gas pipelines, bringing the total mileage of oil and gas pipelines to 144,000 km. Pipeline integrity management is a reliable guarantee for safe pipeline operations by ensuring accident-free operations of new pipelines and continuous safe operations of old pipelines throughout their life cycles. Mr. Liu Xin, Manager of Oil & Gas and Chemical Technical Center of Bureau Veritas, shared Bureau Veritas' practical experience in pipeline safety management at the conference with his keynote speech titled "Development and Application of Pipeline Integrity Management System and Integrity Evaluation Technology".

Liu Xin of Bureau Veritas pointed out that: "Asset integrity management is full-lifecycle management, from design and construction, through production operations and maintenance, to obsolescence. In many overseas projects, a great deal of analysis and assessment work in respect to health, safety, environment and integrity is carried out based on the HSE Case concept at the early stages of development and construction in accordance with the local regulatory requirements. It is well known that pipeline integrity management is data-based and risk-based management. So data acquisition and conversion, carried out in the preliminary design stage, can substantially lay a solid foundation for this task, and will bring more convenience to our future production operations, including the repair and maintenance process. Bureau Veritas' integrity management services have been well-established in China. We have deployed our own pipeline integrity evaluation software and combined integrity management theory with information technology to develop integrity management digital platforms for a number of companies, and were the first to achieve UKAS accreditation for the Asset Management Standard ISO 55001. Our integrity management services cover a wide range of businesses, including offshore structures, pipelines, oil and gas wells, dynamic and static equipment, as well as the entire worksites and refineries. Also, we have provided corresponding consulting, construction, and audit services for many well-known enterprises at home and abroad. Today, domestic companies are actively responding to the trend and vigorously promoting asset integrity management, many of whom have already put in place adequate management systems, and their asset integrity management systems can be further improved by engaging third-party certification, periodic reviews, technical consulting and training."