MagneScan Reaches 1,000 Successful Runs

PII Pipeline Solutions (PII) recently celebrated 1,000 successful pipeline inspection runs of its Next Generation MagneScan inspection tool for assessing metal loss features, deformation and geometry plus advanced integrity assessments in oil and gas pipelines.

Using high resolution Magnetic Flux Leakage technology (MFL), PII’s signature inspection system has distilled and enhanced the capability of all multiple legacy MFL, caliper and inertial measurement unit (IMU) mapping systems into a single system, reducing the number of runs required to meet a specification.


Launched in 2009, Next Generation MagneScan has delivered over six years of year over year growth in numbers of runs. This super-high resolution, multi mission tool has provided increasingly high levels of first run success and reliability to customers on six continents across the globe, with proven performance, offering a higher specification of data than previously available from a single run. Next Generation MagneScan tools have completed 50,000+km of inspections in pipelines from 6” to 36” with a longest run of 560km since launch, and achieved 95% first run success in 2013, 2014 and to date in 2015 at time of publication.

A major part of Next Generation MagneScan’s success has come from the inherent system capability to deliver excellent performance on dig verification, coupled with PII’s focus on evolving the service in response to customer issues and tailoring new offerings to meet the customer’s needs. In order to make each inspection commercially flexible and cost-effective for the customer while maintaining excellent metrics, the Next Generation MagneScan tool is run in a standard configuration, with data processed, analysed and reported as required to comply with the customers’ specific requirements. This allows customers to choose combinations of data from MFL, caliper or IMU at a range of resolutions from High Resolution, to Super High Resolution Plus. Because data is recorded from each module at maximum resolution, the client has the option of revisiting the data up to Super High Resolution Plus without the need for an additional run.  In 2013 and 2014, 70% of runs included mapping and 49% of reports were delivered at Super High Res specification or higher.

From Next Generation MagneScan’s first run, PII worked with its customers to gather dig verification data to validate and improve published specifications, and to develop new improved specifications to address specific customer concerns. Feedback from blind test programs conducted by major customers around the world has been a key enabler to develop and validate these new applications, the results of which have been subsequently published in technical papers.
 
Next generation MagneScan  was launched into the same market segment as PII’s existing MagneScan  inspection tool offering new complementary services. Next Generation MagneScan has secured both new customers and additional runs with existing customers by offering 1) a higher resolution specification and 2) novel applications to deal with previously unaddressed threats including Pinholes and Spiral Weld Anomalies.