Internal Corrosion Failures: Are We Learning from the Past?

In spite of improvements driven by the U.S. Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002 and the added emphasis on integrity management, pipeline failures due to internal corrosion continue to occur. The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) recently noted that 206 internal corrosion incidents were reported on regulated gas pipelines between 2002 and 2012, and new regulations are forthcoming that will increase the requirements for internal corrosion management.1 Data published by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) showed that the number of internal corrosion incidents per year in Alberta for sweet gas-gathering pipelines went from ~25 in 1985 to 125 in 2008,2 and from ~75 in 1985 to 175 in 2008 for oil effluent pipelines.3

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