Pipeline integrity challenges with Jeffrey Jones, VP Sales of SkyX

Today on Two Minute Takeaway, learn pipeline integrity insights in under two minutes with Jeffrey Jones, our Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development. Watch the video below.

What are the most significant pipeline integrity issues faced by Oil and Gas companies today?

Some of the biggest challenges around pipeline integrity involve avoiding catastrophes. Both human catastrophes as well as environmental catastrophes.

While oil and gas companies currently look at the data that’s coming from inside the pipelines with pigging data and such, the data that they get from outside of the pipeline is typically by flying the right of way with an aircraft, whether an airplane or a helicopter, or having folks drive by and look at them right away. 

It’s really not systematic, or an approach that makes a whole lot of sense, because you can’t get really granular data and you can’t get frequent constant data that allows you to look at things over time and get a different perspective. That’s one of the biggest challenges.

The other issue is that 50 or 60% of the pipelines across North America are about 50 years old. The issues around that are encroachment of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are growing and expanding into areas where there are pipelines and vegetation, encroachments of vegetation around these pipelines are growing.

Issues around erosion and leaks are also happening. Oil and gas companies each spend millions of dollars a year trying to avert these challenges and look at these catastrophes before they happen.

Even though they are inspecting these pipelines, they’re not doing it in an effective manner because 90% of the challenges and leaks and things around those pipelines are detected by the humans, the population, the general public, not the inspectors of those pipelines. This tells you there’s a lot of room for improvement around data gathering and understanding the integrity of the pipeline and being able to act on it.

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