The first day of Rio Pipeline (09/03), the largest meeting of the international pipeline community, brought together national and foreign experts to discuss a new view on technologies for pipeline safety. To illustrate the challenges and responsibility of the sector, Marcelino Guedes, executive manager of Pipeline Protection at Petrobras Transporte, defended the need for companies to act more and more transparently with society. "We need to show the tools and technologies we have today for pipeline monitoring," he said.

In the same vein, Heinz Watzka, senior consultant at Watzka Consulting, warned that the industry needs to make more positive communication about pipelines because, often, only the negative outlook for society is left and the result of this has been the loss of concessions. worldwide. "We have 1912 pipelines operating in Germany with total security," he said.

Cliff Johnson, president of PRCI, drew attention to the need for staff training. According to him, most of the incidents originate from workforce errors dealing with pipelines. For Johnson, the solution is to merge and share experiences, just as airlines did during the 1980s. "Unfortunately, many accidents occurred at that time. But the use of database information exchange resulted in a very significant reduction. "We are present in 60% of the pipelines around the world. One of our jobs today is precisely to make this exchange of experiences between companies in the sector."

Another aspect brought by David Miller, director of the API Standards Program, was the need to implement pipeline certifications. According to the expert, the API Standards Program not only develops criteria for such certifications, but also guides companies to achieve them. The last panelist of the day, the PUC-Rio Pipeline Engineering coordinator, José Luiz de França Freire, in turn, shared with the audience experiments and research being developed by the university. He presented cases that were created and solved within the entity's laboratories, bringing new references to the sector.

Also yesterday afternoon, the participants of Rio Pipeline 2019 were able to follow the presentation of technical cases in the workshop "Integrity of pipelines in natural gas distribution", which featured the lectures of "Integrity Management" and "Special topics of integrity".

Exhibition 

One of the highlights of Rio Pipeline 2019 is the exhibition area, which welcomed 50 companies to present the latest innovations in the pipeline market. One of the novelties, for example, was Rosen's Nima. As a kind of app store, the digital integrity and data management platform can bring together a multitude of open source programs.

The Intero Brasil booth presents, for simulation, a fiber optic duct inspection tool that innovates for flexibility. In addition to detecting anomalies, it can also perform online measurement and monitoring as well as offline data collection.

With a focus on training people, Odebrecht Engenharia & Construção (OEC) brought Pipelayer, its operations simulation platform. Through virtual reality, the system enables the reduction of costs by up to 75% and the increased safety of professionals, as well as the reduction of pollutant gas emissions in the environment.

Rio Pipeline 2019 runs until Thursday (05) at the SulAmérica Convention Center. The event is organized by IBP, sponsored by Petrobras, Transpetro, Rosen, Aveva, Comgás, Engie, Intero, NTS, Plumb Logistics, TBG, TechnipFMC, Tenaris, Trapil, Emerson, Plural + Legal Fuel, Worley, OptaSense and Signaltape. See the full event schedule at www.riopipeline.com.br