Overview of oil and gas pipeline failure database

Oil and gas pipeline failure database comprises many failure cases. Through failure information gathering and analyzing, pipeline operators can find out the trend of failure occurrences and evaluate the performance of pipeline management. There are a number of institutions involve failure data management. Databases can be categoried as three types according to their managers: 1) owned by one company, who collects and analyzes failure informations in their own company, such as PetroChina; 2) managed by authoritative management department, who collects and analyzes failure informations of companies under their responsibility, such as PHMSA (Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration); 3) managed by an international group formed through cooperation agreement between several countries and international companies, who collects and analyzes failure informations of companies in the group, such as EGIG (European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group). Failure defining and information gathering by different database managers are disscussed in this paper, which compares their failure rates and trends that newly announced as well. The failure database management of PetroChina is emphasized by the author. Improvement of failure database can be technically supportive for pipeline engineering critical assessments, and would be important references for risk assessment, as the determination of failure probability and consequence are based on the statistical results. Failure incidents are precious wealth for companies, which can reveal the shortages of pipeline management and emergency rescue and enhance the operation safety. © ASCE 2013.