As rising oil and gas demand drive the development of offshore facilities, unmanned offshore platforms are being constructed to transport the hydrocarbon products to shore.
Maintaining product flow through the pipelines from those platforms to shore requires regular pigging — the insertion of a device into the pipeline to clean residue from the inner walls and prevent wax formation.
GD Engineering, an SPX company, offers technology that allows the deployment of multiple pig launchers on unmanned platforms.
Remote Launching
Placed inside the pipeline, the “pig” device cleans residue from the inner walls of the pipeline sections. Oil flowing through the line pushes the pigs along. The GD Engineering solution enables cost-effective, single-line pigging operations to be carried out as part of the regular pipeline maintenance program.
Multiple Pig Launching System
GD Engineering also worked in conjunction with one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the energy industry to design a multiple pig launching system for deepwater applications.
The launcher eliminates the need for round-trip pigging and expensive dual-flow lines to connect satellite fields to host facilities. Individual pigs can be sequentially launched into a pipeline from a remote onshore control room, allowing facilities to provide remote pipeline cleaning and maintenance.
GD Engineering recently supplied fully automatic multiple pig launchers for horizontal-type installations in New Zealand and for vertical-type installations in Romania.