One Call Line Locating Services
Identify & Mark: Gulf Coast Pipeline Services provides One Call line location services for several operating companies on the Gulf Coast. Using drawings and alignment sheets provided by the pipeline operator, Gulf Coast personnel, using specialized detection instrumentation, will identify and mark where the operator’s pipeline is located in the area of concern before any excavation activities are scheduled to take place.
Leak Surveys
Detection & Minimizing Loss: The primary objective of every pipeline operator is to provide for the safe and efficient transportation of products through it’s pipelines while minimizing loss. Gulf Coast Pipeline Services leak detection processes have been designed to ensure that this objective is accomplished with minimal exposure to the public, operator and GCPS personnel. We utilize various methods of leak detection determined by the type of pipeline operation and product involved. These methods can stand alone or be used in combination with other processes as appropriate.
Re-establish and Setting AGMs
Prepare for Digging or Excavation: Most critical when preparing for digging or excavation activities, above ground markers (AGMs) are the known reference points along the pipeline distances from which anomolies or points of interest can be most accurately determined. Gulf Coast personnel, utilizing documentation from the pipeline owner/operator and smart tool vendors, routinely verify, set and re-establish these reference points along the pipeline right-of-way.
PIG Tracking
Providing Transmitters & Receiving: The running of smart tools, caliper pigs, or gauging/go-no-go tools is integral to any operating company’s integrity management plan. Gulf Coast Pipeline has provided pig tacking services for over thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines. We offer turnkey services beginning with riding the line and identifying or re-establishing above ground markers (AGMs), providing transmitters and receivers for the tools that require them, and then monitoring the tool’s location as it runs through the line and providing updates on this progress to the operating company personnel. Tracking services are also provided to monitor the progress of fill or displacement pigs prior to hydrostatically testing a pipeline or tracking cleaning pigs as part of an operating company’s on-line, continuous cleaning/pigging operations.
Staking and Verifying Anomalies
Utilizing Data: When an in-line inspection (ILI) tool run shows anomolies or other issues with a pipeline needing attention, repair crews must be able to accurately determine where to expose the line to verify the tool data and perform any necessary repairs.
Utilizing data from the ILI tool vendor run and alignment sheets from the operator, Gulf Coast personnel will locate and stake out the dig locations for the repair crews.
Filling
Prepared to Provide and Operate :GCPS is prepared to provide and operate ‘fit for duty’ pumps (specified and sized for your pipeline and application), hoses, and fittings to fill your line with fluid prior to hydrostatic testing, running a smart tool in fluid, running a cleaning tool in water, or displacing the contents of a pipeline. Along with pumps, hoses, and fittings, GCPS can also provide frac tanks, water, vacuum trucks, and pig tracking during these processes as well.
Hydrostatic Testing
Providing the Most Modern Equipment: Gulf Coast Pipeline has experience, leadership capabilities and the industry’s highest safety standards to assist you with your hydrostatic testing needs. We provide the most modern equipment required to perform the testing processes required by your integrity management plan. Regardless if it’s a fabricated spool piece presented for a burst test at our facility in Dickinson or miles of buried pipeline in your right-of-way set for a DOT compliant test, GCPS has the professional personnel and top quality equipment to perform your test. Upon completion of the test, GCPS can turn all paperwork over to the operating company or inspector, or we can provide PE certifications to your test using our engineering personnel.
Dewatering and Product Displacement
Providing Top Quality: Gulf Coast will provide top quality air compressors (sized to your needs and requirements) for dewatering your pipeline after hydrostatic testing or for de-inventorying your line of product prior to decommissioning or in preparation of maintenance and repair activities. GCPS can provide oil free air compressor spreads capable of up to 5000 psi and instrument quality air. If flammability is a concern, we can also provide nitrogen displacement processes to eliminate the introduction of air into these systems of concern. GCPS can also provide frac tanks to receive dewatering fluids or erosion prevention structures through which these fluids can be discharged back into the environment under certain conditions.
Cleaning and Drying
A Necessity: The removal of water from liquid hydrocarbon lines is essential in assisting with corrosion prevention, and in gas lines, the formation of hydrates is a big concern. Gulf Coast has complete sets of steel (traps, check valves, reducing spools, etc.) to clean and dry any pipeline size. Using either oil free air compressors and dryers or nitrogen service, GCPS can achieve a line cleanliness necessary to obtain dew point temperatures from the standard -40°F for 7-pound gas, all the way to -80°F for the most extreme line requirements.
Pipeline Commissioning
After or During Downtime: Gulf Coast Pipeline Services can commission your pipeline after construction, maintenance, hydrostatic testing, or any other downtime requiring evacuation of the line’s product. GCPS can prepack the line with inert gas, provide, launch, and track commissioning pigs while filling the line with product, as well as manage all aspects of bringing product into the final destination utilizing by-pass systems with frac tanks or flare systems or taking product directly in your tank or vessel.