The Engineer: Pigs in the pipes
Smart inspection ‘pigs’ are being used to probe the insides of a vast new gas pipeline beneath the Baltic
The glamorous world of international espionage isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when someone mentions the inspection of oil and gas pipelines. But the tools used to measure the inside of pipes, known as pipeline inspection gauges or pigs, have long been synonymous with James Bond films.
In fact, pigs have featured in three Bond films to date. The British Secret Service officer can be seen disabling a pig in Diamonds are Forever in order to escape a pipeline; a pig was used to transport someone across the Iron Curtain in The Living Daylights; and another was used to carry a nuclear weapon through a pipeline in The World is Not Enough.
These tools were originally developed to remove deposits that could obstruct flow through a pipeline, but in 1961 Shell Development demonstrated that a self-contained electronic instrument could travel through a pipeline aboard a pig while measuring and recording wall thickness. And, as a result of further advances in technology, pigs are today more intelligent than ever.
Just last month, a so-called smart pig was used to measure the inside of a new 1,224km undersea pipe route between Russia and Germany. The €7.4bn (£6.3bn) Nord Stream route was built to take some of the stress off the antiquated Ukraine route, which was constructed in the 1970s and up until recently was responsible for transporting 80 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe.
Nord Stream consists of two offshore pipelines that provide the most direct connection between the vast natural gas reserves in Russia and the demanding energy markets in the European Union. Combined, the parallel pipelines, which are roughly 100 metres apart, have the capacity to transport a total of 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year to businesses and households in the EU for at least 50 years, according to the Nord Stream AG company behind the project. MORE