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Petroleum transportation through pipeline and GIS
Chirag Patel
Sstudent
Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Pune,
India
Email: chiragprod@gmail.com
Transportation of crude oil through the medium of pipeline is a conventional way being adopted by all major oil companies. This paper seeks to present a project related to such transportation of the crude oil and petroleum products in three phases; namely the planning phase involving selection of Right of The Way (ROW) in phase one; monitoring in phase two and risk management in phase three.
In planning phase, information regarding geographic features of the area are gathered from satellite imagery, ground survey, digital elevation model (DEM) to select the ROW for pipeline. Various parameters, such as terrain characteristics, rivers crossing, settlements, roads, railway lines, other existing communication networks etc. are given due consideration to plan the ROW. After selecting ROW, database is created, which would contain information for the construction, viz., maximum flow, location of sensors, risk prone areas, soil characteristics and so on.
Once the pipeline is constructed, the database created above is used for monitoring purposes. As safety of pipeline is of prime concern, sensors and slices are provided at particular locations with spatial information available in GIS. With the help of these, rapid action like stopping or diverting the flow can be taken in case of accidents.
The initial cost of implementation of the GIS project may appear to be on the higher side, but the benefits, such as fast response to the alarms of accident, maintenance of pipeline, monitoring the changes occurring inside the pipeline and availability of information of all locations at all times would far outweigh the initial costs.
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