Saudi Aramco’s Proactive Approach to Identify Stress Corrosion Cracking Using Latest EMAT Inspection Technology
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Abdulwahab Qahtani
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Abdulwahab Al-Qahtani
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Abstract
Owned by the Saudi Arabian Government, Saudi Aramco is a fully-integrated, global petroleum enterprise and a world leader in exploration and producing, refining, distribution, shipping and marketing. The Company manages the largest proven reserves of conventional crude oil, 260.1 billion barrels, and the fourth-largest gas reserves in the world, 275.2 trillion cubic feet. Saudi Aramco committed itself to be a reliable supplier of energy to the world, and believes technology is a great enabler of more efficient, more reliable and safer operations. In line with this, Saudi Aramco adopted a proactive approach to identify coating disbondment and stress corrosion cracking in oil and gas systems. This paper summarizes strategies, execution and mitigation plans, to ensure pipeline integrity using state of the art Electromagnetic-acoustic transducer (EMAT) technology. Saudi Aramco successfully inspected several thousand kilometers of operating oil and gas pipelines with the EMAT tool. The inspections were followed by an extensive verification program at locations selected from the collected EMAT data. A detailed comparison was carried out and the findings illustrate the sensitivity and reliability of the EMAT technology.

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