Built to carry two of the most important commodities in the GCC, oil and gas pipelines are considered the lifeblood of the Gulf region.
As the population continues to grow, so does domestic energy consumption, and with it, the need for robust and efficient pipeline network. To address this, governments are planning scores of new projects, with more than 21,000km of pipeline infrastructure expected to be added in the GCC alone over the next five years.
Such projects are expected to drive exponential growth in the pipe market, according to Satish Khanna, general manager of Al Fajer Information and Services.
“Expansion of the region’s population and investments would require more and more manufacturers of metal products, mainly tubes and pipes and related solutions like welding,” Khanna said during the Tube Arabia show held in Dubai this year.
“More and more buyers from around the region find the UAE market a fertile buying spot, not only because it has the production capacity, but also [because] it enables transfer of new technologies to the region,” Khanna added.
One major Saudi provider of pipes and pipeline products said it also anticipates future growth. Ahmed Hamad Al-Khonaini, managing director of Global Pipe Company (GPC), told Oil & Gas Middle East: “Demand for our products is ever present. The Saudi government is focusing on infrastructure projects and supporting the national industrial manufacturers.
“With regard to the business prospects in Saudi Arabia, we are very optimistic because while the rest of the world is facing a financial crunch, the Kingdom has remained insulated from it.”
Recently, the Jubail-based company received an order from the oil and gas heavyweight Saudi Aramco to supply pipes for a 150km gas network in the Kingdom.
The deal will see GPC produce up to 84,000 tonnes of steel pipe for the East West Gas and Natural Gas Liquids NGL Pipeline.
“The local LSAW pipe sector [the kind of pipes GPC manufactures] relies heavily on demand from Saudi Aramco, which is constantly drilling and exploring new oil fields.”
It was growing domestic demand for steel pipes that prompted GPC to start manufacturing products domestically, making it the first local Saudi producer of LSAW pipes.
Today, Al-Khonaini is hopeful that GPC will not only be able to satisfy growing demand in the Kingdom, but also step in to replace imports from abroad. He also says that the company could even start exporting its products and expand its facilities. GPC’s plans for expansion are coming at a buoyant time for steel pipe producers, as a recent report suggests.
According report, in 2013 steel pipes had a market share as high as 80% and are projected to remain the single largest segment of oil and gas pipes in the next few years.
The steel pipes sector is set to witness further growth on the back of new transmission lines planned in and around the region as well as major pipeline refurbishments and overhauls of deterriorating infrastructure.
An example of the latter is the long-awaited 115-km Saudi-Bahrain pipeline, which once completed, will be able to deliver up to 400,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) to Bahrain.
In a recent project update, Dr Abdulhussain Mirza, Bahrain’s Energy Minister, said work on the pipeline was progressing well with EPC projects due to be awarded in August.
The system, which is expected be operational in the first quarter of 2018, will replace the existing aging facilities between The Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) and Saudi Aramco in Dhahran.
Similarly to the Saudi-Bahrain pipeline, most of the region’s infrastructure is situated in remote locations and challenging terrains, where intervention for maintenance is not always an option.
Pipeline facilities are also prone to corrosion, causing production disruptions which can cost companies millions of dollars in revenue as a result of pipeline failures.
To tackle this challenge, a Scottish owned technology provider, Swagelining, offers protective polymer lining technology which provides protection against corrosion, prolonging the lifespan of a pipeline.
“An unlined pipe is often exposed to a certain degree of corrosion every year. To overcome this, designers may add a corrosion allowance, which makes the steel pipe thicker. This is because they recognise that some of the pipeline wall is going to be lost every year due to it meeting with the conveyed product.” David Whittle, business development director at Swagelining, said in an interview from his UK office.
“In these cases, you may only get a limited life out of a system which can fall short of the operator’s requirements, depending on the product and operating conditions.
“More often than not, the owner is going to want 20 or 30 years out of the asset. Polymer lined pipelines can be designed to have a very long lifespan and to confirm this, we have uniquely been able to carry out an inspection on a section of recovered [polymer lined] pipe which had been in water injection service operating in the North Sea for 13 years at 290 bar.
“Following a system modification a short section of the pipe was brought to the surface and the operator assigned Swagelining to carry out testing on the pipe. It was sent to recognised test houses to determine the effectiveness of the polymer liner, to ensure that the host steel had not become corroded behind the liner. The results showed that the protection provided was almost 100%, with virtually no identifiable wall loss,” Whittle said.
“Polymer lining for water injection lines has now reached benchmark status and we see an increasing number of companies now employing its use, with four new operators coming on board over the last year alone,” he added.
Swagelining is currently working with a number of international and national oil companies, which use polymers for hotter service. They are now also looking to engineered polymers for hot sour hydrocarbon service as alternatives to Corrosion Resistant Alloy (CRA) materials.
One of these companies is Saudi Aramco, which in early 2015, launched a joint industry project together with Swagelining and The Welding Institute in the UK. This aims to examine the extent of corrosion incurred in a polymer lined pipeline when subjected to a sour hydrocarbon fluid environment.
“[The first material under test] is actually in the test loop as we speak. After replicating service conditions for a set period a full evaluation will take place, and then other materials will go in. There is a rolling programme to test a number of materials in similar circumstances, over a prescribed period for each, before the first phase is complete.”
A new challenge for the company has been to develop a connection system to join together lengths of polymer lined steel pipe, Whittle said.
“Connectors to date have traditionally been constructed from CRA clad material and Swagelining recognised a number of constraints presented to operators and installers using this traditional technology. This has resulted in the development of a fully weldable, all-polymer connector called the LinerBridge.” According to Whittle, it is as a result of this new connector that polymer lining may become possible for the first time in this region for subsea installation.
“The shallow waters in the Middle East and the Gulf means that generally, the method of laying pipes is using an s-lay barge.
Up until now, this method of construction has been restricted to unlined steel and CRA pipes and considering polymer line carbon steel pipes as an option hasn’t been possible due to the connector issue.
“However, we believe that the imminent launch of our new connector system is opening up the market for laying polymer lined pipes off the back of lay barges, even up to large diameters. To that end, we have recently received interest from a number of designers and operators, with some based in the Middle East.”
