DNV asks industry to develop Arctic pipeline standards

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

An independent foundation with offices in Oslo and Aberdeen sent a press release out in early September asking for the formation of a Joint Industry Project to develop international pipeline standards for the Arctic.

DNV, which is short for Det Norske Veritas, was founded in Norway in 1864 to inspect and evaluate the technical condition of Norwegian merchant vessels. The foundation’s objective is to safeguard life, property and the environment.

“Due to DNV’s in-depth knowledge coupled with our role as independent partner, we are every year facilitating a great number of Joint Industry Projects. … DNV is an independent foundation, and our role for 143 years has been to assist in balancing the needs of business and society. The Arctic challenge is exactly about balancing these needs,” said Kjell Eriksson, director of service and technology development at DNV Energy.

An international provider of risk management services, DNV has a staff of 7,000 operating from more than 300 offices worldwide.

“As oil and gas operations move into the Arctic, a number of new challenges are arising due to ice interaction with surface and subsea offshore installations,” DNV’s statement said. “In relation to pipelines, existing design approaches may be too expensive, technologically limited or uncertain to acceptably manage the increased risk to safety and the environment. DNV is therefore inviting the industry to a Joint Industry Project which will establish a common practice to address these challenges.”

Pipelines associated with Arctic fields will “often need to be located in areas where there is ice-seabed interaction due to ridges and stamukhi (grounded ice ridges which remain attached to the ocean bottom throughout the summer). Hence, the large ice-interaction loads are a threat to the pipeline and a risk to safety and the environment,” DNV said.

Deep trenching is expensive and sometimes impracticable, the foundation said, and there is “often uncertainty whether the final design gives an acceptably low level of risk.” Current approaches using pipeline design criteria and probabilistic design are “variable, and there is a need for greater design consensus that will enable more designers to be able to work in this specialist area,” DNV said.

The Joint Industry Project or JIP which DNV proposes would be aimed at evaluating and presenting design methods and recommendations specifically related to the installation, operation and maintenance of offshore pipelines in areas of extreme cold and ice.

The final result of the project would be published as the Recommended Practice for ‘Arctic Offshore Pipelines,’ the foundation said.

“Operators, regulators, designers, pipeline contractors, specialists, research institutions and universities are invited to participate in the JIP, both through funding and through work-in-kind contributions,” said Catherine Jahre-Nilsen, DNV’s project manager.

Needs fundamental design principles

The RP would be an official code for use by pipeline operators and designers, and would “present a common and documented approach that supplements the requirements of DNV-OS-F101 and other internationally recognized pipeline codes. It will be subsequently updated and maintained to reflect the ongoing R&D work, future JIPs and project experience,” DNV said, noting it was the same approach that has been taken over the years for the initiation and development of other DNV pipeline codes.

The areas that have been tentatively identified for the RP to address are as follows:

• Design philosophy and design principles;

• Design concepts;

• Routing;

• Linepipe;

• Ice interaction loads (simple and advanced approaches);

• Pipeline protection;

• Fabrication and installation; and

• Operation, inspection and repair.

For more information go to DNV’s Web site: www.dnv.com.