Corrosion Management

Date: 8th December 2016

What is corrosion?
Degradation of materials properties due to interactions with their
environments, and corrosion of most metals (and many materials for that
matter) is inevitable. While primarily associated with metallic materials, all
material types are susceptible to degradation.

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Deterioration processes
Corrosion management covers the management of threats to technical
integrity arising from mechanisms of material deterioration and failure,
including but not limited to:
o corrosion processes general, localised and galvanic;
o environmental cracking stress corrosion, hydrogen induced, sulphide
stress cracking, corrosion fatigue, etc.;
o erosion, erosion corrosion, cavitation assisted corrosion and other flow
related degradation mechanisms;
o mechanical damage vibration induced fatigue, brittle fracture.

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Why manage corrosion?
1. Maintain the integrity of the facilities, and to ensure that equipment can be
operated safely and a safe working environment maintained.
2. Loss of hydrocarbon containment on offshore processing facilities due to
corrosion can result in severe consequences upon safety, the environment and
asset value.

It is widely recognised within the oil and gas industry that effective management
of corrosion will contribute towards achieving the following benefits:

Statutory or Corporate compliance with Safety, Health and Environmental

policies
Reduction in leaks
Increased plant availability
Reduction in unplanned maintenance
Reduction in deferment costs

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Corrosion Risk Assessment (CRA)
CRA ranks the static equipment in relation to their corrosion risks and identify
options to, remove, mitigate or manage the risks.
Management of corrosion risks is achieved through the introduction of a
corrosion monitoring and inspection programme.
CRA identifies the corrosion / degradation threats to each item of process
equipment, assesses the remaining life, and feeds the information back into
the overall risk assessment and control system.
CRA is also be used to assign priorities for corrosion monitoring and corrosion
management procedures, including input into Risk Based Inspection (RBI)
schemes.

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Corrosion inspection and monitoring
Successful management of corrosion requires that cost-effective combinations of various
mitigation procedures be employed to minimise risks to asset integrity, to control
hydrocarbon releases and to ensure safety.
Corrosion inspection and monitoring are key activities in ensuring asset integrity and
control of corrosion. Field data and the results of laboratory evaluations should be
trended to obtain up-to-date corrosion information.
In-line systems cover installation of devices directly into the process, but which need to
be extracted for analysis, e.g. corrosion coupons, bio-studs, etc.
On-line monitoring techniques include deployment of corrosion monitoring devices
either directly into the process or fixed permanently to the equipment, such as:
o Electrical Resistance (ER) probes
o Linear Polarisation Resistance (LPR) Probes

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Corrosion inspection and monitoring (cont..)
Off-line monitoring is mainly achieved through the use of inspection and NDT
techniques, which include:
o Visual
o Ultrasonics
o Radiography
o Pulse Eddy Current
New inspection and monitoring technologies should also be evaluated and
considered as part of an ongoing system improvement process.

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El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline Explosion
Story
A 30-inch natural gas pipeline owned by El Paso Natural Gas (EPNG) exploded around 5:30 a.m. on
Saturday August 19, 2000, leaving a crater about 86 ft long, 46 ft wide and 20 ft deep.
The released gas ignited and burned for 55 minutes. It reportedly was visible about 20 miles to the
north in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
12 people who were camping under a concrete-decked steel bridge that supported the pipeline
across the river were helpless to escape the inferno when the gas ignited, producing a 1,200 degree
fireball.

Cause of Failure
The cause of the explosion was determined to be a significant reduction in the pipe wall
thickness due to severe internal corrosion on a 50 year old pipeline.
Severe corrosion occurred because EPNGs corrosion control program failed to prevent, detect, or
control internal corrosion within the pipeline. Contributing to the accident were ineffective
preaccident inspections of EPNG that did not identify deficiencies in the companys internal corrosion
control program.
The safety issues identified in this pipeline failure were the design and construction of the
pipeline, the adequacy of EPNGs internal corrosion control program, the adequacy of federal
safety regulations for natural gas pipelines, and the adequacy of federal oversight of the pipeline
operator.

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Gas Pipeline Explosion - North Texas 06-07-2010

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Thank You