Risk acceptance criteria for oil and gas pipelines

Risk assessment is the basis and core technology for pipeline integrity management, and the risk acceptance criteria is the critical technical issue in risk assessment. According to the principle of "As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP)", the risk acceptance criteria for oil and gas pipelines in China were proposed through statistic analysis on the historical accident data. The acceptable critical value and tolerable critical value of individual risk were recommended to be 10^-6 and 10^-4 respectively. The FN curve model for social risk acceptance criteria (i.e., the relation function between the death number N and the exceeding probability F) was provided. It is suggested to strengthen the establishment of pipeline failure database, since the collection and statistical analysis of historical failure accidents data are significant for pipeline risk assessment.