6 th Pipeline Technology Conference 2011

Transcription

1 6 th Pipeline Technology Conference 2011 The Nord Stream, OPAL & NEL Pipelines and Europe s search for assured gas supplies Gas production in Europe is set to decline drastically in the next few years. It will be necessary to meet the resultant supply deficit by means of greater gas imports. In 2030 Europe will import approximately 70% of its energy needs. The major part of this imports will come from Russia, the world s largest gas producer, to Europe, currently the biggest gas market worldwide. In March 2010 the European Commission announced a million funds for over 30 gas projects - including pipelines. On April 7 th 2010, the first pipes of the Nord Stream Project (Baltic Sea Pipeline) were laid offshore in the Baltic Sea. More than pipes will be laid in two lineseach of them km long - from Vyborg (Russia) to Lubmin (Germany), most of the distance offshore through the Baltic Sea. The first line will be brought on-stream 2011, the second parallel laid pipeline is due for completion in Most of the pipes for both lines will be supplied by EUROPIPE. On April 12 th 2010 Nord Stream AG and EUROPIPE GmbH celebrated the loading of t ( pipes). The Baltic Sea Pipeline will establish a direct link between Russia s vast gas reserves and the European gas transportation system and will deliver gas to Belgium, Netherlands, UK, Germany, Denmark, France and Czech Republic. The gas supply from Russia, starting in October 2011, will be distributed in Europe by two newly constructed pipelines - the OPAL pipeline (Baltic-Sea-Pipeline-Link) heading south from Greifswald/Germany through Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Saxony to the Czech border, and the NEL Pipeline (North-German-Gas-Link) heading west via the Wingas storage plant at Rheden, to the Netherlands, and connecting the UK to the Russian gas sources. On the German-Czech border, the OPAL pipeline will be connected with the planned Gazela Pipeline to connect gas export pipelines in the Czech Republic. Construction of lot 1 of Gazela Pipeline is scheduled to start in spring OPAL and NEL are designed and owned by WINGAS (80%, 51% at NEL) and E.ON Ruhrgas (20%, 10% at NEL) and will be operated by OPAL NEL Transport Gmbh. Gasunie from the Netherland took a 20 % stake of NEL pipeline on June 11 th Fluxys from Belgium signed an intention agreement for a 19 % stake in the NEL project in August Construction of the OPAL pipeline began in September/October 2009 and the construction of NEL is scheduled to start in March The maximum capacity of Nord Stream Pipeline will be 55 billion cubic meter per year (each line will be able to accomodate 27,5 bcm p.a.) which will cover 25% of extra gas imports to the EU or secure the supply of more than 20 million households. Alternatively, one would need 700 LNG tankers per year to transport this quantity.

2 The OPAL will absorb a capacity of 35 bcm and the NEL is designed for a capacity of 20 billion cubic meters. There will be one station onshore at the landfall of Nord Stream in Greifswald, one compressor Station at Radeland (Berlin) and 30 metering stations. Key Statistics : Pipe Diameter: mm, wall thickness: 22,3 mm, MOP: 100 bar, total length 470 km, length of pipes 18 m, weight of each pipe 15 tons, pipe quantities: units or t. Pipe production at EUROPIPE Mülheim was performed from February 2008 until June One pipe per truck load = transports to the site! Pipe metal capacity needed: 10 times more than the steel used for the construction of the Titanic. Adding the steel demand for Nord Stream and NEL to this figure, the total steel demand will equal the construction of 50 luxury liners of the same size as the Titanic. Due to the tight schedule, construction on OPAL has to take place over two winter seasons. On 1 st July 2011, the pipeline must be ready for the first gas and the commercial start of the line is scheduled for 1 st October More than employees are contributing to the construction of OPAL. At each of the 14 sections eight sidebooms and 25 excavators are in the field. Max Streicher has used more than 204 heavy equipment devices in the construction of the difficult lots More than 780 workers have been permanently working on the site and more than h will be spent in the construction of these 4 sections only. The OPAL is the most ambitious on-shore project under construction in Europe. There are only two short pipeline sections (12,5 km in total) in Germany which were built in the diameter DN 1400 before. 1 ½ km long pipe section of E.ON Ruhrgas at Waidhaus and approx.11 km of WINGAS Pipeline from the Polish border to the Wingas compressor station at Mallnow. Each DN 1400 pipe s weight is 50% higher than one of DN 1200.This has tremendous effects on the load capacities and requested quantities of sidebooms, excavators and transport facilities. And there are further complications on the way for the OPAL construction. In the southeast of Berlin at Halbe, the pipeline will be laid into an area where, in April 1945, the battle of Berlin took place. More than Russian and German soldiers were killed in action during this battle of encirclement and annihilation.the search of explosives ordnance therefore has been extremely important and has taken its time. The ammunition disposal agency has been able to examine around square meters per day. Further obstacles to be overcome on the OPAL route are several river and waterway crossings (River Peene, Elbe and Löcknitz and as well the Oder-Havel and Dahme Chanel) which have to be crossed using trenchless technology e.g. the Elbe culvert a crossing of 189 m length executed by Max Streicher.

3 The construction of OPAL is an outstanding European project in which numerous European Pipeline companies are involved. Construction has started on all 14 sections: Section 1-2 PPS/HABAU, section 3-6 Ghizzoni, section 7-10 Bonatti and section Max Streicher/Sicim. All pipes were supplied by Europipe GmbH. The factory coating was applied by Mülheim Pipecoatings GmbH. From March 2011 the construction of NEL will start from the landfall of Nord Stream at Lubmin heading westwards through Mecklenburg-Pomerania and Lower Saxony to the WINGAS storage at Rheden where the line will be connected to the Middle European gas grid. Lenght of the pipeline: 450 km, 330 km will be constructed by WINGAS, 125 km by E.ON Ruhrgas/Open Grid Europe. All pipes will be supplied by Europipe GmbH, too. Max Streicher will be responsible for the construction of the lots of WINGAS in Mecklenburg. DENSO GmbH s contribution to the construction at OPAL and NEL is the supply of corrosion prevention tapes for field-joint coating and of appropriate application devices for the wrapping process. The tape systems will be applied by the service companies Eupec Pipeline Services GmbH and Peper GmbH. The tape system used on the OPAL-NEL- DENSOLEN Tape System N 60/S20,was designed a few years ago, based on the special requirements of E.ON Ruhrgas for large pipe diameters and exceeds the requirements of the highest class of EN C 50 in significant parameters e.g. excellent peeling strength. Another outstanding feature is the coating resistance of >10 11 Ohm m2. As a rule for the cathodic protection a line is considered free of defects at a value of > 10 8 Ohm m2. The system comprises of a butyl-rubber based primer, a three-ply self -amalgamating tape for corrosion prevention in 1,2 mm thickness (N 60) and a three -ply tape in 0,5 mm thickness (S 20) for mechanical protection. At the OPAL project the rolls length are tailor-made per joint, calculated to wrap the innerlayer for corrosion prevention and the outerwrap with the same overlap of 50% simultaneously. As the cutback of the pipes will be exceeding the standard of 150 mm at NEL, a new tailorized size must be evaluated for the application. These three-ply tapes will amalgamate in the overlap areas providing a cold sleeve, which will prevent the tape structure from the ingress of water or oxygen. The outstanding feature of butyl rubber is its ability to self-amalgamate in these overlap areas, resulting in a completely sealed, impermeable and sleeve-type coating. Incompletely sealed tape overlaps inevitably lead to spiral corrosion followed by complete undermining corrosion. This effect is often shown if a two-ply tape (PE/PVC carrier with one adhesive side) is used for the corrosion prevention. A high percentage of bad experiences made with tape coatings all over the world originate

4 from this spiral corrosion effect. These damages will never occur by using three-ply tapes. Therefore as a minimum requirement the innerwrap tape or corrosion prevention tape (DENSOLEN Tape N 60) should always have a three-ply structure with butyl rubber adhesive layer on both sides of a PE carrier-film. Among these structures the asymmetrical one is to be preferred, because its 1,2 mm thick inner adhesive layer ensures better filling of surface irregularities and potential hollows. For pipe diameter exceeding DN 400 the featured use of these special designed two tape system DENSOLEN N60/S20 is mandatory at E.ON Ruhrgas projects and for the bigger diameter at WINGAS projects as well. One reason for that is the complete covering of the distinctive higher weld beads by the thick butyl rubber layer. State-of-the-art asymmetrical corrosion prevention tapes like DENSOLEN Tape N60/S20 have a four-ply structure, containing an additional layer between carrier film and adhesive. This intermediate layer is co-extruded from a blend of butyl rubber and polyethylene thus ensuring that the well known delamination effect is avoided by this tape structure. These three-ply tapes have proven their impressive long-term behaviour for more than 30 years in a survey of E.ON Ruhrgas testified in The inner-and outerwrap show different colours-grey for the inner-black for the outerwrap- to prevent a mix-up of the tapes by the applicators. Whenever possible, a field coating with properties close to the performance level of the existing line should be chosen. Therefore a stress-class C 50 should always be used as the higher peel strength and intendation resistance will ensure a higher safety level. The motor driven application device DENSOMAT 11, engineered and manufactured by DENSO, has been used successfully on several pipeline construction sites with different diameters in Europe before. For the OPAL, necessary tailor-made adjustments on the DENSOMAT 11 were invented in order to fit the complex challenges of DN 1400 pipes. The DENSOMAT 11 has been designed for variable and fast application of corrosion prevention tapes on pipes, especially for long distance pipelines. It can be left on the pipeline while it is transferred from one joint to the subsequent. By opening the ring of the chain guide at the bottom, the machine can be pushed forward along the pipeline with minimal force. An additional advantage is a requested clearance of 50 cm only around the pipe. The DENSOMAT 11 can apply two tapes simultaneously with constant overlap and tension providing a high-quality coating at constantly high speed. Technical design and engineering will often not correlate with practical conditions on site.

5 On large scale construction sites as OPAL permanent response to unexpected circumstances on site is requested. A lesson DENSO had to learn early on. The pipe bedding method of Italian companies, for example, differs from methods being used at most European sites, where the pipes are laid on pipe supports made of timber beams. The Italian companies make the pipe support of sand, embedding the pipes on sandheaps which cover mostly of the pipe s surface. This has the advantage that the pipe load will be disposed homogeneously and the pipe position is very stable. For the use of DENSOMAT 11, however, this method was a real challenge as one could not pass these sandheaps on first trials. DENSO designed a scissor-type jack that will lift the DENSOMAT 11 on both sides of the chain guide ring of approx. 30 cm, which will solve the problem of transporting the device to the next joint. One should keep in mind that the value for a field coating system at a pipeline projects will amount to maximum 0,04% of total costs of a new construction project, but one may incur incalculable high subsequent damage claims by choosing an inappropriate coating system. Pipes do not fail unless their coatings fail first to quote Derek Mortimore, one of the most experienced corrosion experts worldwide. For every application there are high quality corrosion prevention systems available, however the perfect universal coating for all applications has not been developed yet. There are many good systems available, but they all have certain limitations inherent to the systems in their technical performance. At standard operating temperatures, three-ply self-amalgamating plastics tape systems still offer the widest range of application combined with a experienced high reliability. For Europipe, the pipe manufacturer, the biggest challenge was to handle the logistics and storage of 2.3 Million tons of pipes with a total length of km in this three biggest European projects. From the perspective of Max Streicher, as one of the major construction companies, every day was a challenge coping with innumerous tasks. Every day a tank truck was needed to keep the equipment on the four lots working. Roads and infrastructures had to be built besides the pipeline construction including the invention of an IPLOCA Novelty Award solution for construction roads created by Max Streicher. Construction work will be simultaneously on OPAL and NEL for several months in spring and summer This will be for sure not the last challenges at this projects, but we all are convinced that we will overcome them in a good co-operation with all involved parties.. The authors wish to give special thanks Mr. Michael Muth from Wingas, Chief of Construction at the OPAL Pipeline and the entire staff for providing them with all technical data and general support.

6 February 14 th, 2011 Authors: Michael Schad Director Business Development DENSO GMBH Felderstrasse 24, D Leverkusen Ph: Field Joint Coating Thomas Garcon Head of Construction at OPAL & NEL projects Max Streicher AG Schwaigerbreite 17 Construction D Deggendorf Christian Kassel Technical Sales Manager EUROPIPE Pipe Manufacturer Pilgerstrasse 2 D Mülheim Christian.Kassel@europipe.com