A good project is generally measured by its ability to adhere and conform to all its quality documentations as well as its engineering deliverables. Often times, despite facing challenges, good teamwork is essential to overcome these issues and fulfill contractual obligations. One pipeline in particular experienced considerable delay in construction schedule due to continued third party threats apart from its own technical challenges. These factors resulted in contractor not being able to deliver one of its contractual scopes, which was performing operational pigging for the 28" x 31 km Glass Reinforced Epoxy (GRE) pipeline, from Third River Water Intake Facilities to Garraf Integrated Facilities Terminal (GIFT) in Garraf Oil Field, Iraq. The pipeline was designed to deliver 400 kbd of preliminarily treated raw water to Water Management System (WMS) for further processing. Up to the time of writing, however, the pipeline was only transporting approximately 100 kbd of water as the whole WMS facilities were still under commissioning.

To overcome the challenge, project team took the initiative to perform a due diligence by analyzing available design documents, construction and repair records, hydraulic reports as well as conducting site visit to the facilities. Upon selection of pig and its rescue tool that was suitable for runs in GRE material, a test spool was constructed to simulate the pig's movement in the pipeline with multiple restrictions as per design data, i.e. 1.5D bends, back to back bends, reduced diameter, and flanges connection to carbon steel pipe. As the results were promising, the pigs were then delivered to site for actual run in the pipeline. The paper discusses the technical and operational considerations to accomplish the intended operational pigging of the pipeline.