Pipelines for transferring pressurized seawater constitute a significant part of the network for enhancing oil recovery in many offshore oilfields. To maintain the integrity of the system it is important to mitigate corrosion in the pipeline, or consequently corrosion may cause the operational pressure to be lowered or, in a worst-case scenario, a pipeline failure. Water treatment is essential to mitigate corrosion, although the potential for microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) in injection water pipelines is assumed to be lower compared to oil or multiphase pipelines where nutrients are abundant and a higher temperature facilitates microbiological growth.

Presence and activity of MIC-causing microorganisms were investigated in a 16” diameter and 9.6 km long injection water pipeline from the platforms Dan FF to Halfdan A and further to Halfdan B. Nitrate was added to the water and sampling of pigging debris from the pipeline showed that both sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), nitrate-utilizing bacteria, and methanogens were present in significant numbers of 105 - 106 cells/g. Enrichment cultures of SRB showed that exponential growth occurred within 22 hours at 20 °C. The metabolic parameters will be implemented in a model to quantify more accurate determination of the MIC risk in injection water pipelines.

Subject
Water, Methanogens, Bacterial growth, Pipelines, Microbial growth, Nitrate injection, Nitrates, Bacteria, Pigging, Microorganisms, Microbiologically influenced corrosion, Samples, Sampling
Keywords:
Pipelines, Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC), Mitigation, Danish Sector of the North Sea, sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), methanogens, qPCR, Reverse Transcriptase qPCR (RT-qPCR), cell specific activity, MIC risk management
© 2017 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
2017
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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