Underground Construction - August 2018 - 26

Challenges of Leak Detection

Case 1: Gathering system following two years of expansion from 20 to over 80 well-pads.

tion requirement and scan rate.
SCVB can achieve good reliability and sensitivity, even
with existing instrumentation
of limited accuracy if the meters
are repeatable, avoiding the
high capital investment to upgrade instrumentation accurate
enough to support an RTTM.
The Energy & Environmental Research Center tested the
SCVB system alongside volume
balance systems in the North
Dakota study. The report concluded, "Ultimately, Company
B2's product identified all withdrawals without an erroneous
false positive indication. Progress to detection was consistent
during all tests despite pump
cycling and slack variation, and
detection occurred under steadystate, static, and transient conditions - all within a single CPM
LDS package. Additionally, Company B2's LDS was the only LDS
evaluated that provided leak
location estimates."3 Company
B2 used SCVB.
The SCVB system proved
itself again when installed on a
produced water network with
multiple injections in Canadian
winter conditions. It detected
a leak at a well-pad in the first
quarter of 2018 and located the
leak with sufficient accuracy to
allow the producer to quickly
minimize the damage. It would
26

AUGUST 2018 | UConOnline.com

have been difficult to detect this
produced water leak visually
because of snow cover and the
produced water freezing soon
after spilling out.
Based on the instrumentation requirements, infrastructure needed to support the
CPM scan rate, transient functionality and high tolerance of
composition change, the SCVB
technology is the most suitable
for gathering systems. Cases 1
and 2 below are two of many
examples of its successful application on upstream pipeline
networks.

Case 1: A crude
gathering network
Early in the shale boom, the
Atmos Pipe SCVB detection
system was successfully implemented on several complex
gathering systems; some collected crude and others collected produced water.
The first case shows a crude
oil gathering system in Texas,
which has maintained the SCVB
LDS successfully for several
years. First implemented onto
the gathering system with 20
inlet stations, it has since been
expanded to over 80 wells.
The initial SCVB LDS was
installed with a 1 percent minimum detectable leak size sensitivity, and maintained that

Case 2: Part of a produced water gathering system.

level as the network grew with
complexity. The operators regularly test the system with physical product withdrawals and
simulated leak tests to verify
performance on the continually
expanding gathering network.

Case 2: Produced water
gathering system
The second case is an example of the SCVB leak detection
system installed on a large produced water gathering system
in Texas and shows only a section of the entire system. With
multiple sectionalizing flow
meters segmenting the network
into separate hydraulic sections, it allows the client to optimize the performance of the
leak detection system in each
segment and maintain sensitivity as the produced water network expands unceasingly.
The system can detect a minimum leak of 1 percent of the
nominal flow in 60 minutes in
some sections, and a minimum
leak of 2 percent of the nominal
flow in 60 minutes in the remaining sections. These thresholds are set to assure high reliability to minimize disruption
to operations from false leak
alarms.
Conclusions
Oil and gas producers continue to add crude gathering and

produced water pipelines in
this shale-driven renaissance of
North American energy production. With rising demand for
nimble, efficient and cost-effective pipeline leak detection,
SCVB technology has proven
to be the most suitable and
reliable for gathering systems.
Field deployments show the
SCVB LDS functions well with
minimum instrumentation and
slow data scan rates. Independent, third-party trials have
proven that this cost-effective
system detects and locates leaks
during transient operations,
and easily tolerates changes in
product composition. This system continues to prove itself in
the production fields, detecting
real leaks quickly.
References
1. Reed, B. (2017, February 25). These
Facts Suggest That Water "Commoditization" and a Water Price Index
Is The Future Of Upstream Energy
Water Management Cost Reduction.
Retrieved from http://www.buzzle.
comhttps://www.sourcewater.com/
blog/water-commoditization/
2. Barclays, Impact Series - 02, "Water
and oil and gas, finding the right
mix"
3. Energy & Environmental Research
Center, University of North Dakota. Pipeline Leak Detection - Field
Evaluation Of Multiple Approaches
For Liquids Gathering Pipelines. December 2016.

http://www.buzzle.com http://www.buzzle.com http://www.sourcewater.com/blog/water-commoditization/ http://www.sourcewater.com/blog/water-commoditization/ http://www.UConOnline.com

Underground Construction - August 2018

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