Background

Karachaganak Atyrau Transportation System (KATS) is the main export route for stabilized liquid hydrocarbons produced at the Karachaganak Field and these pipelines have been in operation since 2003. The transportation system consists of a 24 inch buried pipeline from the Karachaganak Processing Complex (KPC) to Atyrau on the Caspian Sea. There are two pumping stations; one at Bolshoi Chagan and one at KPC and a receiving and storage facility in Atyrau. KPO operates and maintains all of these facilities. In Atyrau, the line connects to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) system which transports oil to Novorossiysk where it is loaded on tankers and exported.

AVENCOM Responsibility

For the protection of part of the export pipeline Karachaganak-Atyrau from unauthorised interruptions in its work, an OptaSense system, produced by the English company QinetiQ, was designed and installed. The system was designed to discover, classify and determine the site of potential threats to the pipeline.

AVENCOM Approach

Normally an OptaSense controller is capable to protect up to 40 km of the pipeline. Each controller sends about 1Gbps stream of raw data. The controllers were supplied by an i-Boot unit to be able to remotely restart the system. A 48 VDC to 200 VAC inverters were installed to provide uninterruptable power supply for the equipment during frequent power failures. The OptaSense intrusion detection system normally recognizes three types of events: personnel, transport and digging which the system display on the map and the event log table. Operators can reach them by running the Report Generator which pulls both text and graphical information from the archive.

Summary

The system was calibrated and tied to every kilometer post along the protected segment of the pipeline. A series of blind tests were done to check the system meets the accuracy and event recognition requirements. Twenty-four customer’s employees were trained to operate the equipment. Each passed examination at the end of the training sessions.