Risk Assessment of a Petroleum Transportation Pipeline in Service

Risk assessments are conducted to a petroleum transportation pipelineSHUAI Jian, DANG Wenyi et al with a risk assessment indexmodel by thinking over the risk factors in pipeline operation.In the model, likelihood of failure consists ofsuch 6 sub-models as inner or external corrosion, third party damage, ground movement, design/material, system operation.The effects of a pipelineon environment, high-value area and residence are involved in theconsequence of failure.The weight of risk factors is fixed from the statistic analysis of accident history dataof the pipeline.The pipeline is segmented according to the principle of equal risk and actual condition of thepipeline.The score of both likelihood and consequence of failure is computed for each segment of thepipeline.Furthermore, factors sensitive to risk are analyzed and risk source of the pipeline are identified.Based on the risk assessment results, risk distribution and relative risk ranking over the pipeline are given.It is pointed out that major problems for the pipeline are soil corrosion, third party damage and incorrectoperation in pipeline construction.These risk assessment results can be taken an a reference to theintegrity management of the pipeline.