Research progress of the abandonment discrimination methods on the of oil and gas pipelines

The oil and gas pipelines which were constructed in China in the early stage are faced with a series of problems, e.g. serious aging, frequent accidents and high operating costs. In order to improve the safety and economy of these aging pipelines, it is necessary to conduct abandonment discrimination and evaluation on them. In this paper, the research status of oil/gas pipeline abandonment discrimination at home and abroad was investigated. And it is proposed that the scientific pipeline abandonment discrimination method shall be composed of four parts, i.e., evaluation mode, index system, evaluation method and abandonment discrimination criteria. Then, the pipeline abandonment discrimination evaluation mode and the corresponding key indexes were established by quantifying the degree of abandonment based on applicability, integrity, risk/reliability, economy and legality. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of 4 commonly used abandonment discrimination methods were analyzed and the evaluation methods suitable for different abandonment discrimination evaluation modes were recommended based on the characteristics of conventional evaluation methods in order to provide the basis for the establishment of scientific, systematic and rational abandonment discrimination methods.