Abstract
Many offshore oil & gas reservoirs contain unwanted components that complicate the safe transportation of the hydro carbons to onshore refineries. Over time these unfavorable constituents corrode unprotected carbon steel pipelines. In 2013 a pipeline failed in the Caspian Sea within weeks under operational conditions. This high profile failure has already caused many oil companies to rethink their established methodology for pipe lines. Using cladded pipes is a method to safely transport contaminated oil & gas from the well to the cleaning facility. There are various ways to clad pipes with a variety of corrosion resistant alloys (CRA). One category of methods is based on cladding a plate which subsequently is formed to a pipe. The hot roll bonding process is the most dominant route. The second common category of methods is a pipe in pipe solution which is referred to as mechanically cladded pipe. Both groups of methods have their benefits as well as disadvantages but both are industrially proven.
There is a third way to produce clad pipes which can be classified between the two aforementioned categories above. This method starts with a carbon steel plate and CRA strip material so the cladding forms part of the pipe forming process. As this new technique produces a clad pipe product which, from a technical perspective, is situated between the established clad pipe methods, it is called Hybrid Clad®. The resulting bonding strength between the carbon steel and the CRA layer is significantly above that of existing mechanically cladded solutions but lower than metallurgical bonded clad variants.
This paper will provide details of clad pipe manufacture using this new method of production whilst emphasizing the key steps which influence product quality. Secondly, the main benefits and disadvantages of the established clad pipe production methods will be compared with each other and the Hybrid Clad® solution. This comparison is intended to identify the preferred clad pipe product to provide a solution to transportation problems.
