Cathodic Protection Performance Assessment for Crude Oil Transportation Pipeline from Sarir Oilfield to Tobruk Refinery

Abstract

Corrosion processes of metallic structures buried in soils or in contact with soils has long been a serious engineering and economic problem, as well as many other structures are buried in the soil, suffering from soil corrosion problems which affect mainly the external surfaces of these structures. This paper highlights and pay attention to preserve and protect petroleum equipment particularly pipeline from damage caused by corrosion throughout a case study which carried out in Tobruk Sarir transportation line which feeding Tobruk Refinery. This pipeline is exposed to extensive damage due to the underground corrosion processes unless suitable protection technique is used. The data of cathodic protection has been collected for pipeline from field study, to optimize the cathodic protection system. This study tries to assessment the performance of the cathodic protection system for the transportation pipeline with a length of 513 km. The period of the study extended from 2010 until 2023, whereas the results the few first years where compared with the recent years at the end of the period from 2019 to 2023. The field study was revealed that the cathodic protection system had been subjected to many attacks due to the decreasing in the protection effort, which was recorded in 2019 and 2023. The obtain data of protection voltage readings of study points revealed that less than 400 volts, which is much less than the required protection voltage. This leads to severe suffering of corrosion processes of transportation crude oil line.