Right on the route

This is the sort of challenge that frequently confronts pipeline engineers. 'It's not just about drawing a line on a map,' says Ian Neilson, chief engineer, pipelines and civil, for BP's exploration and production business, based in Sunbury. 'There are a lot of interactions and complexities you have to take into account when you are going through different terrains and different countries and regions.'

Investigating a pipeline investment opportunity, evaluating pipeline projects or planning a pipeline route, all require a large amount of data to be collected up front, covering factors ranging from geography and topography to local politics, existing infrastructure and the location of environmentally sensitive areas. The whole process can take months, and the decisions made rely largely on experience and manual calculations.

'The process is often about people standing over maps arguing - not always rigorously - about why the pipeline should go here and not there,' observes Neilson, an observation which prompts Trevor Hill, director for surface engineering for the TNK-BP joint venture in Russia, to recall: 'I can remember cases where people would base an initial routing assessment on the maps in the Times Atlas of the World.'

The system incorporates industry standard data collection and database software in compliance with the Pipeline Open Data Standard (PODS), which BP strongly supports. PODS, which is used by many industry service providers and software developers involved in all stages of pipeline development, underpins the basis of PPFT. Michael King, a senior pipeline engineer in BP's exploration and production technology group and programme manager for the GIS project in BP, emphasises that there are very good reasons for this.

RCT is also simple to use. Once the end points of the pipeline are entered into the application, within minutes the tool generates suggested routes and corridors for the line, taking into account environmental concerns, construction issues and other factors. 'We have a global data set, so if you tell us where the two end points are for a pipeline, we can create an initial route for that pipeline anywhere on land in the world in probably less than an hour,' says King.

'As part of PPFT, RCT is already developing an impressive number of supporters,' says Neilson.

Comments like this serve to confirm that BP's financial investment and more than two years of effort that went into developing the RCT application were resources well spent. 'The resulting time and cost savings,' King points out, 'will pay back this investment many times over.' Although ongoing enhancements - such as the addition of radar data from the space shuttle radar topographic mission to improve accuracy of geographic and topographic information in the RCT model, and the addition of an offshore routing function - will make RCT even more useful, King still feels there is more to be done. 'Our ultimate goal,' he explains, 'is to see RCT making a difference at the front end of every pipeline project.'

This goal is coming closer to reality. The RCT application is being migrated into BP's American Mega Data Centre and will become a standard product application in BP's digital and communication technology portfolio. 'The vision,' says King, 'is for RCT to be the first port of call for BP's engineers when considering a pipeline project.'

In Russia, PPFT is being used to evaluate the options and appraise the business opportunity for building a regional pipeline system for transporting liquids from a group of oil and gas fields in the Yamal region in northwest Siberia. The project is at a very early stage, and the end point of the pipeline is still under discussion. 'In this situation the use of PPFT is proving to be a very rapid way of establishing a preliminary pipeline routing, together with an order-of-magnitude cost,' says Lindsay Peden, project engineer in BP's Russia and Kazakhstan strategic performance unit. 'And once routes are established, it allows us to run a number of throughput scenarios.'

Also in Russia, PPFT helped to establish and assess route options for a 2000km-long pipeline between the giant Kovykta gas field - now operated by Gazprom - and a proposed final destination in China. PPFT has also enabled BP's engineers to confirm the results of an international feasibility study on the Kovykta development, carried out in 2001.

'Kovykta is a very large and complicated project,' explains Charles Bludworth, BP's Kovykta export surface facilities manager. 'There are many challenges including seismic, permafrost, mountainous terrain, peat bogs and numerous river crossings with meandering flood plains. The PPFT route selection tool and rapid hydraulics analysis enabled us to home in quickly on the best routes and concentrate our efforts along these corridors.'

'Our consultants had spent a considerable time assessing one of the proposed pipeline routes - and the PPFT came up with an almost identical route in less than a day,' recalls Paul Bibby, project manager in the Russia and Kazakhstan team. 'It was most impressive and extremely versatile, allowing us to carry out a very quick but accurate analysis of an alternative option in Turkey, and to carry out a more comprehensive study looking at alternative throughputs, hydraulics and costs on the preferred route.'

Trevor Hill, director for surface engineering for the TNK-BP joint venture in Russia, hopes that the application of PPFT will soon extend much further. 'At the moment around the world we have good examples of the use of PPFT at different stages of various projects, ranging from concept evaluation to detailed design and operation. Now we are looking forward to seeing a BP-operated project where PPFT is applied in full from beginning to end.'