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It is a common occurrence to discover that we need to extend the life of a pipeline beyond its original planned life. This may be due to unexpectedly high reserves from the oil or gas field, or increased potential from new satellite fields and wells which need to be tied into the pipeline. Alternatively it sometimes happens that the operating conditions for a pipeline are more aggressive than anticipated, leading to premature degradation of the line. As a result, a plan may be required to extend the life of the pipeline to match the remaining life of the field. This situation occurs quite often for example, with increasing water content from wells towards the end of a field's life. The water can lead to dramatically increased corrosion rates. In all these cases, the key to extending the lifetime of the pipeline is in determining a reliable value for the corrosion rate in the pipeline and using this to extrapolate the degradation process into the future, to determine what remedial action needs to be taken. (reference)
