Misunderstandings on the application of leakage monitoring systems

The application of leakage monitoring systems in long-distance pipelines has become increasingly popular, but pipeline operation companies have some misunderstandings on the performance of leakage monitoring systems. And due to the existence of these misunderstandings, the operating staff cannot take effective advantage of the leakage monitoring systems to analyze the variation of operational conditions, and the pipeline operation companies can neither evaluate the performance of leakage monitoring systems rationally, nor distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of different leakage monitoring systems effectively. All of these have weakened the actual leakage monitoring capability of pipeline operation companies. In this paper, the common misunderstandings on the application of oil pipeline leakage monitoring systems were summarized and corrected one by one. In addition, the causes of these misunderstandings were analyzed. Finally, some specific measures to improve the performance of leakage monitoring systems were presented from the view point of customers. It is indicated that these measures will help pipeline operation companies to correct wrong understandings on the performance of leakage monitoring systems and develop suitable monitoring, evaluation and management methods, so as to improve the leakage monitoring capacity effectively.