People forget that there’s a lot more to a pipeline than a long tube of welded joints. Where those joints are at risk of stress fractures, pipe flanges are installed. At either end, and in the course of the pipeline itself, are numerous operating systems, maintenance sheds and branch-lines. All of which adds up to an awful lot of flanges and pipe fittings to keep maintained.
Pipeline operators don’t usually own what they are shipping. The owners are the oil and gas refineries, industrial plants and utilities companies, who pay the pipeline company to ship their products to other areas.
Pipeline revenue depends on how much is shipped out. To ensure their products are delivered reliably, shipping companies usually pay the pipeline a fixed volume per month. However, this gives the pipeline less revenue to maintain their lines. Similarly, lower shipping orders mean less revenue for maintaining the plants and refineries. In other words, in both cases throughput is generally tweaked to its absolute max – placing the flanges and pipe fittings under tremendous pressure.
It makes sense that, when throughput is high, the quality of the flanges and pipe fittings must be high also. So companies making pipe fittings and flanges for these industries must address this issue.
To keep costs low, industries often ignore potential failure points, and use cheap alloys in place of, for example, Duplex pipe fittings. By providing industrial clients with high quality flanges and fittings, we at Chemipetro are encouraging them to take a responsible attitude towards systems maintenance.