Development of Risk Optimisation Model for Oil and Gas Transportation Pipeline Routes

Abstract

Abstract Identifying safe routes for the pipelines that transport Oil and Gas (O&G) products is a challenging topic in the current environment; particularly in the insure countries. Because the relevant data about the probability and severity levels of the Risk Factors (RFs) that affect the safety of these pipelines are rare. Which makes the existing risk assessment tools ineffective to analyse these RFs and identify safe route for these pipelines. Hence, this paper aims to develop a risk assessment tool that can identify safe routes for the new O&G pipelines in Iraq in a systematic way using the following steps. Firstly, an industry-wide questionnaire survey was conducted to gather the data about the probability and severity levels of the RFs in such projects in Iraq. Secondly, the Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) in MATLAB was used to analyse and rank the RFs. Because the FIS can reduce the uncertainty in risk analysis, which results from the lack of data and the biasness of stakeholder’s judgments about the RFs. Thirdly, the existing information from the new pipelines projects were analysed to identify the potential RFs in the proposed routes for these projects. As the O&G pipeline network in Iraq is above-the-ground, this paper focused on the RFs that affect this type of pipelines. Fourthly, the safest route for the new pipeline was identified by optimising the risk index value for each route. While, the route that has less value of risk index is the safest route. This paper analysed the five routes that were suggested to build a new gas export pipeline in Waist in Iraq. The pipeline will transport the extracted gas from Badra filed to the shipping points in Iraq. It was found that route number 4 is the safest route for this pipeline.