The protection of valuable pipeline assets weighs heavily on the minds of both asset owners and operators. The costs associated with damaged or inoperable assets can run into the millions of dollars in material, labour and lost revenue costs, along with impacts on health and wellbeing.
In 2014, Mipela implemented X-Info Connect for the APGA (Australian Petroleum and Gas Association’s) POG (Pipeline Operators Group) to capture the necessary information needed to analyse and inform operators about pipeline incident trends, including data relevant to AS2885. With a web enabled interface (X-Info WebConnect), operators are able to securely log in via an Internet browser and record incident or near miss data with relative ease.
Pipeline owners and operators need to record and analyse information about pipeline incidents in order to understand how they can better protect assets and prevent these incidents from occurring.
A recent upgrade of X-Info WebConnect to version 5.1 has enabled the Activities function to simplify use of the system. This way a user sees only what they need to see in order to perform their tasks. Users can now create an event, find an existing event and look up incident history by case with data going back to 1965.
Steve Dobbie, Business Manager at APGA said, “Over time, this data can be used to detect the existence of spatial patterns in the occurrence of incidents, enabling operators to undertake risk mitigation strategies. The more operators that contribute to the database, the more meaningful the data becomes”.