Consulting Areas

Pipeline and Storage Tank Integrity Assessment

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We typically respond within one business day.

Ultrasonic thickness gauge reading taken on an excavated steel pipe

Pipeline and Tank Integrity Services

Pipelines and tanks rarely fail without warning. Corrosion and coating damage usually develop over years, and a pipeline or storage tank integrity assessment finds them, measures how much strength is left, and tells you what has to be repaired and when. Dreiym Engineering’s corrosion engineers assess buried and aboveground pipelines and underground, at-grade and aboveground storage tanks for owners and operators. Our article on pipeline integrity management explains why it pays to plan this work.

Aboveground crude oil storage tank battery with catwalk and inspection crew, Williston Basin, North Dakota

A nine-tank aboveground battery in the Williston Basin. Photo by Lindsey G, cropped and re-encoded, used under CC BY 2.0.

Related work: Tampa tank farm assessment.

Two flanged pipe risers with corrosion at the soil to air interface and marked test points — **CP Surveys**

Most integrity programs start with corrosion. We review your cathodic protection survey data, coating condition and operating history, and test where the data is missing, so that a small problem that’s easy to fix doesn’t become a leak or an outage.

Bare steel pipe and girth weld after the old coating was removed at a dig — **Bare pipe and girth weld at a dig**

The key to maintaining integrity is finding the sections at greatest risk of corrosion: low-resistivity or wet soil, coating defects, shorted casings, interference from foreign structures, and areas the cathodic protection doesn’t reach. Once those areas are identified and their corrosion rate is estimated, you can decide what to repair, recoat, protect or monitor.

Where low-resistivity soil is driving the problem, adding or upgrading cathodic protection is often the most economical fix. A soil corrosivity analysis shows how aggressive the soil is.

Corroded output terminals and cable lugs inside an older CP rectifier — **Cathodic Protection Startup**

Our engineering calculations estimate the remaining strength and remaining life of corroded pipe and tank components, which tells you how soon each anomaly has to be addressed. Where corrosion has reduced the strength of a segment, we can recommend a reduced maximum operating pressure until it’s repaired, with priority on high-consequence areas. With that information you can plan repairs before a failure forces them.

Pipe with a coating repair measured with a tape at a validation dig — **Coating repair measured at a dig**

We also support in-line inspection (ILI) programs for regulatory compliance, from supervising and managing the project to reviewing and evaluating the ILI tool-run data, including magnetic flux leakage (MFL), XYZ mapping and combination tool data. We can compare the reported anomalies with your cathodic protection and coating survey data to help find their cause.

Large steel water storage tank protected by a cathodic protection system

Following American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and American Petroleum Institute (API) standards, we perform fitness-for-service analysis of pipelines and tanks in support of DOT/PHMSA requirements. Reports are PE-stamped where required.

Contact us for a free quote on underground or aboveground tank or pipeline integrity services. We typically respond within one business day.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a pipeline integrity assessment?

An engineering evaluation of whether a pipeline can keep operating safely. It identifies threats such as external and internal corrosion, measures or estimates the damage, calculates the remaining strength, and recommends repairs, pressure limits or a reassessment interval.

What is fitness-for-service?

A quantitative evaluation of whether a damaged component, such as a corroded pipe or tank shell, can keep operating safely, at what pressure and for how long. API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 is the main fitness-for-service standard, and ASME B31G gives the remaining-strength method for corroded pipelines.