GE's PII Pipeline Solutions business is well-known in the industry for continuously rethinking and reshaping technology to satisfy evolving customer needs. Our teams provide comprehensive pipeline integrity management solutions, including in-line inspection, data management, integrity engineering and a full range of field services, all geared toward higher productivity, greater safety and longer life for our customers' pipelines.

Looking back through our past, you will see a long-standing commitment to the industry’s future. We invest aggressively to develop breakthrough technologies. We work closely with customers and industry associations to target our efforts on the most important challenges. And when you hear about our latest breakthrough, we’re already at work on the next.

ThreatScan™ monitoring system boosts pipeline security

Third-party damage is the world's leading cause of failures in both gas and liquid pipelines. While some damage causes immediate failures, other times damage can go unnoticed, only to develop into costly leaks or failures years later. Technology capable of reliably determining when pipelines are struck, such as during construction activity, farming or other ground excavation, provides a major step forward in ensuring the safety of transmission pipelines and additionally security of supply to customers. "It also demonstrates our commitment to GE's ecomagination™ initiative to help customers meet environmental challenges" said Claudi Santiago, president of GE's Oil & Gas business.

Launched in late 2006, ThreatScan was designed to address specific shortcomings of alternate monitoring methods: to provide a cost-effective means of reliably monitoring the entire pipeline length 24 hours a day; and to ensure fewer false calls and rapid notification of the location of any impact.

"The major benefit for ThreatScan is that operators will immediately know when and where their pipeline has been struck," said Santiago. "Armed with this information, operators can investigate what happened, rapidly repair any immediate failures or damage that may cause future failure and take action to ensure it will not happen again."

In addition to immediately notifying operators of specific impacts in a given pipeline, ThreatScan service provides monthly summaries of dates, times and locations of all impacts, further enhancing the operators' risk analysis and ability to establish long-term, third-party damage mitigation plans.

ThreatScan quickly notifies operators of all potentially harmful impacts to their pipelines. The system is extremely sensitive and can filter out incidental noise while still detecting even the most minor pipeline strikes that otherwise might go unnoticed. Onboard processing and subsequent signal analysis provides detection of real events, sparing operators from needlessly deploying their resources.

Using ATEX-certified sensors, an on-site processor, satellite communications equipment and, when appropriate, a solar-based autonomous power supply, ThreatScan is easily installed on existing above-ground pipeline structures and fittings. This allows pipelines to be retrofitted without excavation and makes the new product suitable for deployment in "high-potential areas" even on a temporary basis.

PVi 4.0 simplifies asset management

This February, we launched PVi 4.0, a major new version of PipeView™ Integrity (PVi). The suite of software solutions helps transmission pipeline operators and local distribution companies assess and manage the integrity of their assets and combines several important integrity tools. "We focused on making PVi 4.0 more accessible from the user's standpoint as well as adding specific tools that our customers were seeking," said Manuel Terranova, General Manager of PII Integrity Services. "This release represents a major advancement for pipeline integrity management solutions."

Enhanced capabilities include:

• area selection using Google Map interface or a schematic view of their pipeline system task-based workflows for data alignment, engineering critical assessment, risk calculation and integrity management plan generation
• probability of exceedance calculations to determine current and future conditions of the pipeline
• variable growth rates for corrosion analysis and support for RUNCOM™, our powerful tool that compares in-line inspection corrosion data
• unprecedented data alignment capabilities for analysis and visualization of data from in-line inspections, above-ground surveys  and other sources
• Band View tool to present data in ways that are meaningful to each situation

Users can focus on any area for more informed decisions. Also included in PVi 4.0 is enhanced reporting through Crystal Reports and distributed Risk Assessment architecture for scalability and performance to support large system implementations.

SheetGen™ increases practical capabilities and precision

Related to PVi 4.0 is the recent launch of our PipeView SheetGen software. The application automatically generates alignment sheets directly from relational databases and geographic information systems – providing up-to-date, construction-quality drawings of a pipeline system for field use as well as analysis and decision-making purposes.

"SheetGen was the first alignment sheet generation product in the industry when it was developed in 1992," says Terranova. "Now that same development team is delivering another first – the first pipeline alignment sheet generation tool to deliver that same level of capability in ArcGIS."

With this release of SheetGen, users can format sheets, place sheets and generate sheets directly within ArcGIS, a geographic information system from ESRI. The alignment sheets can be generated from data stored in ArcGIS as well as rendered in ArcGIS layout space for plotting and storage purposes. SheetGen users can also easily customize alignment sheets with Format Sheet Wizard. Individual sheets with associated templates are then placed automatically or interactively along the pipeline using Sheet Placer. From there, generation of alignment sheets can be performed for all or some of those sheets directly from the most up-to-date data at any time.

SmartScan™ DS clears the way for deep-sea pipelines

At depths of 1,500-3,000 meters, deep-sea pipelines are built to withstand extremely high pressures. As a result, they typically feature thicker walls than regular pipelines and include multi-diameter segments that are "unpiggable" – meaning they cannot be inspected with traditional ILI tools.

So we developed SmartScan DS, our new multi-diameter in-line inspection (ILI) tool designed specifically to help operators of deep-sea pipelines overcome key obstacles to expanding into previously inaccessible offshore fields. ILI inspections are a primary method for identifying corrosion defects that could eventually lead to costly and environmentally harmful pipeline releases.

SmartScan DS is a high-resolution MFL tool with a unique collapsible structure that enables it to navigate multi-diameter lines, as well as a number of novel components and subsystems, including highly sensitive sensors, pressure-proof electronics and magnetic circuitry.

"SmartScan DS is ideal for those areas in which deep-sea exploration and development will be concentrated over the next five to 10 years," said Claudi Santiago, president of GE's Oil & Gas business. "Because many of these new offshore fields are too deep for traditional ILI tools, SmartScan DS will help operators protect their vital energy supplies as well as delicate marine ecosystems around the world."

For more information, please contact:

Laure Brooks
laure.brooks@ge.com

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