April 2021, Vol. 248, No. 4

I suppose if I just wanted to write a column that assigned the “villain” label to someone involved in the Great Texas Blackout of 2021, there would be plenty of worthy candidates from which to choose.

A collection of brief articles provides a snapshot of global pipeline-related news from this month.

Clouds are gathering over future pipeline construction as the Biden administration’s environmental focus begins to seep into Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) initiatives.

A collection of brief articles provides updates on current pipeline projects from around the world.

Western Gas, the owner and operator of the Equus Gas Project, signed a memorandum of understanding with APA Group assess supplying the gas at competitive prices to western Australia domestic gas customers and East Coast markets through a new pipeline, a news release states. Both companies are based in Australia.

This article examines redundant overpressure protection (OPP) requirements at the city gates in the U.S. and how several operators are at risk of noncompliance as states begin to enforce redundant OPP requirements specifically at the city gates.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) re-examination of the Federal Pipeline Safety Regulations should ease regulatory burdens on the construction, maintenance and operation of gas transmission, distribution and gathering pipeline systems, according to the final rule in the Federal Register.

With production curtailments lifted and a post-COVID-19 upturn in sight, Canadian oil production is on the rise, prompting concerns that output from Alberta’s oil sands could again exceed takeaway capacity within a few years, even if current pipeline construction is completed.

The start-up of the Cuxtal 1 gas pipeline represents a key infrastructure project aimed at satisfying the demand for energy in this region of Mexico, which is currently growing at twice the national average: 4.1% versus 2.6%.

A growing recognition is seeping out of the industry that the dump-fossil-fuels campaign isn’t going away, and oil and gas operators must take responsibility for their carbon footprints. From global majors to local gas distribution companies (LDC), the oil patch is thinking a lot more about alternative energy and renewables.

For midstream oil and gas companies, edge-computing platforms create opportunities that resolve long-standing problems and effectively enable real-time data in asset management and decision-making,

Phillips 66 selected Crux OCM, a system of robotic industrial process automation (RIPA), for an oil and gas operations pilot program. The program will incorporate the company’s pipeBOT, which requires fewer manual commands for control room operations.

It is important to accurately measure hydrocarbon commodities transferred through pipelines or marine terminals to maximize revenue generation at the point where the ownership of the commodity is transferred.

This article looks at some types of offshore pipeline, their chief characteristics, and obstacles in the path of new constructions. Here we have a look at three main types of offshore pipeline. These are: intra-field and export pipelines which are ubiquitous and the less common transmission pipelines:

Free spanning of subsea pipelines is a concern during both the installation and operational phase of the pipeline life and needs to be monitored to ensure the integrity of the pipeline.

Leigh Ann Runyan, CMP, will take over as executive director of the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in mid-April. She replaces Stephen Graham, who is retiring.

Corrosion metal loss assessment is a method for evaluating the strength of corroded pipelines that includes criteria from ASME/ANSI B31G, which is a guide for the evaluation of the remaining strength of corroded pipe.

Tank cars transport roughly 2 million shipments of hazardous materials (hazmat), carrying goods that are essential to North America’s economy, public health and quality of life. Railroad safety is the key to making it all work. Rail is recognized as the safest mode of transportation for moving bulk shipments of hazardous materials.

As natural gas has a central role to play in mitigating carbon emissions, LNG producers have started to look for ways to minimize or counterbalance their carbon footprints, which ongoing LNG decarbonization efforts are likely to expedite.

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) will collaborate with Neptune Energy to test a first-of-its-kind approach for measuring oil and gas methane emissions from offshore oil and gas facilities.

Updates from Sensirion, Ralston, Cortec, Weldcote, AIO and BPS are included in this month's What's New.

It has been another tough couple of weeks for the pipeline industry. Keystone XL lost its Presidential Permit. A critical infrastructure project that would have delivered immense benefits on both sides of the border, cancelled as an act of backward-looking political symbolism by the President of the United States on his very first day in office.