Key Note Presentation
Jackie Forrest – Executive Director, ARC Financial
Jackie kicked-off the day’s event with a thought-provoking overview of the North American energy sector and explored a variety of key factors that pipeline operators need to be aware of and plan for as we move forward into 2022. Key focus areas included: changes with supply and demand, reaching net zero as a priority for sustainability programs, and the use of technology as a key driving force to successfully operate in a data-driven environment.
How will the Evolving Data Landscape Affect Implementation of PHMSA’s Gas “Mega Rule”?
Ben Mittelstadt – Director, Technical Services
PHMSA’s Gas Mega Rule outlines new regulatory changes in the US that have added requirements for pipeline operators to complete and document activities such as MAOP reconfirmation, Material Testing and Verification and integrity assessments in locations where they have not previously been required. In this presentation, Ben explored how efficient and effective processes are necessary to implement and address these requirements, how access to data underpins them all, and how novel approaches through data sharing and data science support the development of industry leading solutions.
The Intersection: Advanced Threat Engineering
Matt Bayne – Director, Technology Enablement
Last year, we introduced our perspective on Advanced Threat Engineering: at the intersection of threat engineering expertise, technology enablement, and disciplined lifecycle management. Over the past year with this paradigm in play at Dynamic Risk, we’ve seen advancements across all three of these areas. We highlighted ways that we’re advancing how our algorithms provide better insights, how we’re treating data as an asset, measuring its quality & impact. We looked at how our enhanced “what if” analysis allows you to incorporate cost into the equation, new ways of visualizing results that unlock new insights and advanced modeling tools to rapidly prototype potential algorithm changes. Across all these areas – our teams have innovated to get you to insightful actions, faster.
Turning Data into Actionable Insights
Mike Westlund – Principle Consultant, Technical Services
Dynamic Risk has access to a wide range of pipeline operator data with our IRAS database and is currently exploring opportunities to turn the data into insights. Our “Insight Hub” is a subscription-based offering for our customers that was introduced at our Partners’ Conference in 2020. It allows data scientists to leverage vast amounts of data and apply machine learning to reveal trends and insights. In this presentation, we showed how we have used pipeline parameter data, ILI data and machine learning algorithms to predict the location of external corrosion.
Data Science in the Workplace
Armando Borjas – Team Lead, Asset Risk | John Cram, Integrity Engineer
Technology advancements coupled with the data-driven workforce of the modern energy industry have transformed data into a highly demanded commodity. Data science is an emerging field that can leverage this commodity to enable the development of data modelling, the derivation of new insights, and the streamlining of existing processes that were previously considered inaccessible. In this presentation we discussed how data science is augmenting the decisions, analysis, and efficiency in integrity engineering.
PG&E – Lessons Learned from Recent Loss of Odorization Events
Corine Herrmann – Manager of Measurement Services, PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) experienced three loss of odorization events on the PG&E gas pipeline system over an 18-month period ending November 2020. These events involved reduction or loss of natural gas odorization as-a-result of a tie-in of a newly constructed pipeline and the completion of two separate in-service hydrostatic pressure testing projects. This presentation summarized the actions taken by PG&E in response to the low odorization events and the lessons learned from the odorization process review.
Re-purposing Idle Pipeline Assets
Han Wu – Manager, Upstream Services & Analytics
As the world evolves away from consumption-driven growth and focuses on sustainable growth, the oil and gas industry in Alberta is finding ways to adapt, innovate, and become more efficient. One way to achieve this is by finding new business opportunities that leverage existing infrastructures, especially those that are under utilized or left idle. In this presentation, we looked at how uncertainties and regulations around return-to-service and operating parameter changes can be managed through comprehensive engineering assessments.
A Holistic Approach to External Corrosion Threat Management
Parth Iyer – Senior Integrity Engineer
Pipeline operators regularly employ risk-based inspection (RBI) decision making to prioritize expenditures. In Canada, this risk analysis is typically performed at least once per calendar year to comply with CSA Z662. At the same time, operators also collect data from the various prevention and mitigation systems such as cathodic protection pipe-to-soil potential surveys or product sampling data. This data can be used to validate the effectiveness of the prevention and mitigation (P&M) systems and identify deficiencies that might hinder performance so that they can be addressed proactively. Unfortunately, when diagnostic inline inspection (ILI) data is available for pipelines, this mitigation program-related data is rarely used to inform risk-based decisions. This presentation discussed a qualitative approach that leverages both P&M, and inspection data to help better manage the threat of external corrosion. This can help in the efficient prioritization of both pro-active and re-active integrity repair activities and develop better leading indicator metrics to evaluate pipeline integrity program performance.
PC2021 New Software Feature Videos
Review the latest software updates for the IRAS software suite, as well as Explorer, in this series of software update videos.