For many years, corrosion personnel have pondered how to determine a criterion for selecting pipelines in low-velocity, high water cut oil emulsion systems in which to apply corrosion mitigation measures. Ideally, utilizing a well-designed, field-wide corrosion monitoring program will assist greatly in determining the corrosion potential of the lines and assist in prioritizing lines in terms of failure risk. It is often difficult to justify the cost of such a monitoring program, however, because of monitoring costs, the number of lines in a field, and the average oilproduction for each line. For fields in which pipeline corrosion is a serious issue and requires remedial action, most operators select a simple solution, usually based on failure history and water cut; they apply a threshold water cut value in which all pipelines at or over this value receive corrosion mitigation measures. Investigation of internal corrosion failures in several oil systems indicates that applying a water cut criterion to prioritize corrosion-prone pipelines is an overly simplistic and conservative approach to cost-effective corrosion control.
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