A Brazilian Pipeline Incident Database: The PETROBRAS and TRANSPETRO Initiative

Abstract

Statistical data available from several international sources, such as the reports provided by the European institutions EGIG, CONCAWE and UKOPA, as well as by the American Department of Transportation – DOT, indicate that pipelines represent the safest mode of transportation for hydrocarbons and other dangerous products when compared to other alternatives, such as road, rail, waterway, etc. Operators ensure a high level of safety of their pipelines by investing large amounts of effort and resources in accident prevention, efficient contingency procedures, environmental protection and reliability along the life cycle of their assets. However, the pipeline industry, both in Brazil and abroad, is frequently asked to demonstrate their safety performance both by environmental and regulatory agencies, as well as by society, considering the assets already in operation and also those that will still be built (new pipelines). Such requests are based on the most opened and detailed communication between pipeline operators and the other stakeholders involved. In this context, the organized and standardized collection of data related to pipeline failure events, such as failure mechanisms and their consequences, along with relevant and specific data regarding the assets and their operations, is essential to foster the process of knowledge construction on this topic. It allows generating consistent information both to meet the stakeholders’ requests and to improve risk management of pipelines by the operators, ultimately supporting decision-making. Therefore, this work aims to create a Brazilian Pipeline Incident Database, considering firstly gas pipelines and oil pipelines operated by TRANSPETRO, a PETROBRAS Subsidiary. This research intends to study the characteristics, the architectures, the assumptions and the principles adopted by the international pipeline failure databases currently available, considered here as benchmarks, in order to propose an analogous and specific structure for the reality of the Brazilian Pipeline System.