Inspection and maintenance of oil & gas pipelines: a review of policies

Abstract Oil and gas (O&G) pipelines are expensive assets that cross through both the ecologically sensitive and densely populated urban areas. The pipeline failure may have potentially significant consequences for both the natural and human environments. In order to maintain the integrity of O&G pipelines, inspection and maintenance processes should be governed by efficient policies. The objective of this paper is to conduct a state-of-the-art review of maintenance policies of O&G pipelines to investigate their advantages, limitations, and associated implementation issues. Maintenance policies can be categorised into corrective, preventive, predictive and proactive. Corrective maintenance policies (1940s) were based on the ‘repair when broke’ philosophy. Economic considerations shifted practice towards preventive maintenance (1970s to 1990s); later with improved inspection techniques and environmental regulations, predictive and proactive or risk-based maintenance (RBM) policies were developed. This review explicates different methodologies for RBM and related issues, e.g. uncertainties and variability, conservative assumptions, etc. Uncertainties associated with investigation and prediction of defects have been more frequently reported in the literature so far. Moreover, existing studies primarily focused on reducing the likelihood and cost of failure, whereas consideration of environmental factors in overall risk has been a relatively less addressed issue.