Managing Scaleup: Installation of a Novel Integrity Monitoring System Through Challenging Terrain

Abstract High fidelity distributed fiber optic sensing (HDS) provides highly sensitive integrated acoustics, temperature, and strain/vibration over long distances. This technology has enabled preventative pipeline leak detection and several value-added integrity and operationally oriented applications utilizing acoustics and real-time and cumulative strain measurements. Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have successfully leveraged HDS data to deliver accurate event detection. Deploying and commissioning this technology over very long distance pipelines comes with a multitude of practical challenges, including conduit deployment with open cut and trenchless construction methods, fiber cable injection, handhole and system hardware location selection, design of optical architectures to optimize data quality, autonomous and fault-tolerant management of remote systems, data management for hundreds of terabytes acquired daily, and the computationally intensive nature of field-deployed ML models. To complicate matters, some requirements remain dynamic, changing over the course of pipeline construction. For instance, optical architectures must continually adapt to the as-built reality of construction. Case studies will be provided to demonstrate how these long-distance pipeline challenges were addressed throughout the construction of ∼980 kilometres (km) of new pipeline. Examples will be provided of challenges encountered during fiber optic placement along the right of way, including deployment using Horizontal Directional Drills (HDD), micro-tunneling, auger boring, Direct Pipe and other methods. Another study will review the innovative solutions employed to accelerate and automate the commissioning of the monitoring systems as well as performance of acoustic baselining to satisfy the regulatory requirements of the external leak detection / pipeline monitoring system being active at the onset of pipeline operation. A discussion will be provided on how the deployment of this pipeline monitoring system has resulted in the delivery of a leak detection and integrity monitoring solution, while simultaneously enabling advanced pipeline analytics, automation, and control.