Sonatrach and Huawei work on smart pipeline fibre sensing inspection solution

The solution ensures high security, intelligence, and high efficiency of pipelines through automated pipeline inspection, which is enabled by distributed fibre optic sensing technology.

As a key contributor in the oil industry of Algeria, SONATRACH runs about 43 oil and gas pipelines, accompanying with 14 000 km optical cables. Traditional manual inspection is costly and inefficient, and it is difficult to obtain the pipeline running status 24/7 in real time. The SONATRACH Joint Innovation Centre hopes to work with Huawei and other partners to reduce O&M costs, proactively warn pipeline damage, and quickly locate fibre cuts using innovative technologies.

Huawei has developed an innovative pipeline fibre sensing solution using the distributed fibre optic sensing technology. In the solution, Huawei OptiXsense EF3000 (an optical sensing device) is deployed to implement 24/7 high-precision automatic pipeline inspection and warning.

The smart oil and gas pipeline fibre sensing inspection solution is based on Huawei's optical fibre sensing solution and live-network service management process. When external construction occurs around a pipeline, the accompanying optical fibre deployed along the pipeline collects vibration information and transmits the information to the optical sensing device deployed in a station or block valve station (BVS) equipment room, thereby achieving precise positioning.

Joint innovation practices show that the fibre warning solution has excellent performance in pipeline inspection scenarios, for example:

Different events such as fibre cuts, manual excavation, and mechanical excavation can be accurately analysed, so that a valid site visit can be arranged.

The alarm accuracy is high, with a false positive rate of only 0.012 times/km/day. All alarms within 2 meters above the optical fibre can be reported normally.

The positioning capability is powerful. The average positioning error is less than 10 meters, and the GIS location information on the optical cable map is accurate.

Sana Lallali, Manager of SONATRACH Joint Innovation Centre, said, "Fibre Sensing Inspection Solution helps solve problems such as difficult manual inspection and slow risk identification. We are satisfied with the joint innovation achievements with Huawei. We hope to further cooperate with Huawei to promote the intelligent transformation of the oil industry."

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