Algeria's state-owned oil company SONATRACH displayed at the MWC Barcelona 2024, its smart oil and gas pipeline fiber sensing inspection solution deployed with Huawei
The fiber optic sensing technology that is distributed throughout the pipeline network enables automated inspection, ensuring high security, intelligence and efficiency of pipelines.
SONATRACH controls a connection of about 43 oil and gas pipelines, which are backed by 14,000 km optical cables. Going forwad, the company's joint innovation centre will be collaborating with Huawei and other partners on bringing down operation and maintenance costs, and prompt identification of pipeline damages and fiber cuts using innovative technologies.
Huawei's newly developed pipeline fiber sensing solution uses its own technology called OptiXsense EF3000 that can implement 24/7 high-precision automatic pipeline inspection and warning. When external construction occurs around a pipeline, the accompanying optical fiber deployed along the pipeline collects vibration information and transmits the information to the optical sensing device deployed in a station or block valve station (BVS) equipment room, thereby achieving precise positioning.
The scope of inspection includes accurate analysis of different events such as fiber cuts, manual excavation, and mechanical excavation, based on which a site visit can be arranged. With high alarm accuracy, false positive rate is said to be 0.012 times/km/day. All alarms within 2 meters above the optical fiber can be reported normally.
Sana Lallali, manager of SONATRACH Joint Innovation Center, said, "Fiber Sensing Inspection Solution helps solve problems such as difficult manual inspection and slow risk identification. We are satisfied with the joint innovation achievements with Huawei. We hope to further cooperate with Huawei to promote the intelligent transformation of the oil industry."
