By James Stafford of Oilprice.com* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
LONDON (IDN) – The 2010 Kalamazoo spill and the 2013 Exxon leak in Arkansas are the most glaring incidents, but these are just the big leaks that are found right away and reported.
Most leaks are found eventually – but there is money to be saved and damage to be avoided by catching them at the smallest rupture. Right now, we rely on pigs in the pipeline to do this.
It’s called “pigging”. Pigs are inspection gauges that can perform various maintenance operations on a pipeline – from inspection to cleaning – without stopping the pipeline flow. The first “pigs” were used strictly for cleaning and they got their name from the squealing noise they emitted while travelling through the pipeline. The current generation of “smart pigs” can detect corrosion in the pipeline and are thus relied on for leak detection.