A new joint industry programme, launched by InterCorr Intl. Inc. and Shell Global Solutions, a division of Shell Oil Products Co., will investigate cost-effective and reliable systems for monitoring corrosion and flow assurance in subsea pipelines. In addition to Shell, other oil companies taking lead roles in developing the program are BP Amoco, Intevep-PVDSA (the R&D arm of Venezuela’s national oil company) and Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil. “We expect to have about 10 to 15 participants in the programme, including oil and gas producers, major suppliers, and service companies,” said Dr Andrea Ethridge, senior consultant for InterCorr, a corrosion solutions company in Houston. One of the problems experienced by deep-water operators is the limit to the number of monitoring options–none of which has been proven in deep-water service–that are available to them. The major purpose of the InterCorr program will be to integrate several monitoring capabilities into a single unit and verify their performance under simulated deep-water conditions before a field trial.
