My achy breaky….. hard spot? In the season finale of Season 2, Jing Wang from TC Energy joins the Pipeline Things to discuss hard spots. Jing breaks things down for Christopher and Rhett, and she uses over 5 different analogies to do it—from Venn diagrams, to Harry Potter, to face moisturizer. You do not want to miss this episode!
Highlights:
- Mullets are back. Will Rhett get one?
- If an operator approaches hard spots for the first time, how should they find a hard spot in a crack?
- Let’s say someone identifies a line, understands the condition of that line, runs a hard spot tool, and receives the report. Now, what?
- How does characterizing the hard spot relate to the MFL capabilities?
- Where do we, as an industry, need to head in understanding hard spots?
Have any questions about the episode? Submit them for Rhett & Christopher to answer in an upcoming Q&A!
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Rhett
On today’s episode of Pipeline Things, we take on heart spots with Jing Wang from TC
Energy. It was fantastic. We covered puzzle pieces, analogies, Harry Potter, the rodeo, Venn diagram, teaching finance and Venn diagrams to 10 year olds.
Chris
It’s fantastic.
Rhett
It was a great episode. No, it really
Chris
Put the puzzle pieces together. Absolutely, a completely packed episode with information, lots of great takeaways on hard spots, think you’ll enjoy it. Thanks for joining us.
Rhett
All right. Welcome to today’s episode of Pipeline Things. I am your host, Rhett Dotson, my co -host, Mr. Christopher De Leon. And again, we are going to have a super exciting episode, at least I am excited about today’s episode and we’ve got a super fun guest. It’s going to be lots of announcements, but you know, Chris, it’s rodeo season right now in Houston.
Chris
It’s like Christmas, Crawford season rodeo, like it’s fantastic.
Rhett
But you know what’s interesting, so we were at the rodeo last night, and I was also back in Louisiana this weekend and there’s some tie ins here, not just crawfish and the tie in. One of my family members is a middle school teacher and she told me, she’s like, you know, she said mullets have come back in style. So they have mullets. But she’s like, my seventh graders think they invented the haircut. She’s like, so my seventh graders come in and –
Chris
Have they not seen Joe dirt?
Rhett
No! They haven’t seen Joe dirt and they have never heard of Billy Ray Cyrus, which is great. And the tie is we saw a lot of mullets at the rodeo last night.
Chris
Yeah, it’s real.
Rhett
Right. So yeah mullets have come back. Have you
ever thought about growing a mullet? You know, did you try as a kid?
Chris
No.
Rhett
Did you try as an adult?
Chris
Mm -hmm. It’s uh, I feel like a mullet is almost a little bit of a culture and uh-
Rhett
Are you gonna let Leo grow a mullet?
Chris
Well, Leo can do whatever he wants.
Rhett
Yeah, well wait, all right. Let me maybe the responsible party, Will Amanda let Leo grow a mullet?
Chris
I think Amanda would as well. I think if we were to tie rodeo and mullets, it almost makes me wonder a bit like, if he’s gonna wear a mullet and he’s gonna be at the rodeo, it makes me think of what event he would do, right? Would it be bronc riding? Would it be the wagon races? Would it be, bull riding?
Rhett
You see it’s really funny you mentioned that. I noticed a body type in each of the
—
I was starting to say wagon racing, but I don’t know if he’s big enough.
Chris
You know what it might be wagon racing, depending on how long the mullet is just flying back.
Rhett
The wagon racing guys were some big dudes.
Chris
Yeah, because you gotta lean on the inside when they turn.
Rhett
Yeah, but I thought it’d be like a small skinny, like a jockey, right? Smaller, better? No, clearly in wagon racing.
Chris
Well you gotta lean, brother.
Rhett
Yeah, I guess so. Um, so here’s, here’s, here’s the tie in for, uh, or for, for, for, let me try that again. Here’s the tie in for mullets to what we are going to talk about today. It’s really funny that all these kids think they invented mullets and mullets went out of fashion a long time ago and then they have popped back up on the scene. Clearly.
Chris
I was wondering, you know, we see that happen generationally, right? Where something goes out of style, then it comes back like I also saw mom jeans are coming back now.
Rhett
So follow up on our last episode I feel kind of like that’s hard spots like a lot of work was done on hard spots back in late 90s early 2000s and they were kind of in vogue and then we didn’t hear anything about hard spots for a
while and now as an industry—
Chris
It’s one of those like old new problems.
Rhett
So hard spots mullets hard spots are the mullet pipeline integrity throughout of the world.
Chris
You know, I think it depends.
Rhett
My achy breaky, I’m trying to think how I can go with that. I don’t know if I can make that work.
Chris
Well I can’t tell you this, I guarantee you that our guest is going to help us.
Rhett
So I tell you what, I’m pretty excited about the guest for a couple of reasons. When we did the hard spot episode, this is the first name that came to my mind, because this particular individual is super passionate about hard spots, Knowledgeable on the subject.
Chris
Has experience.
Rhett
Has experience and likes to dig in. So I think it’s time.
Chris
And there’s also another segue.
Rhett
What’s that?
Chris
To this, is it’s also International Women’s Day.
Rhett
So you’re already doing it, so I would like to welcome our guests. So our guest for today’s episode is Mr. Jing Wang, Mr. Jing Wang. Miss.
—
We are gonna have to re -film this. I feel like we might have to re -film it, but we are doing it live.
Jing
Hi, Chris.
Rhett
Hi, it’s the Jing Wang, yes, from TC Energy. And it’s super exciting ’cause Jing is actually our first female guest on the show. Female engineer. And as Chris pointed out, on the heels of International Women’s Day?
Chris
Yeah. It couldn’t be more perfect.
Jing
So I’m international ’cause I’m from Canada.
Chris
Yeah. – That’s what—
Rhett
It works.
Chris
She’s our first Canadian guest as well.
Jing
Oh yeah.
Chris
How great is that? –
Rhett
There are multiple firsts on this episode. That’s, I can see now as producers going to run with that as the theme, multiple firsts and hard spots. I’m already giving you the title.
Chris
So they’re going to think you’re going to get a mullet for the first time. You know what, can I be real with you? If you went to my barber, he would do like a really cool high taper and just leave it long in the back. And you could kind of say it’s a mullet.
Rhett
That’s called a rat tail. So we, those were called rat tails when I was a kid growing up and I’m not more, if I come home with a rat tail or a mullet, Morgan’s just going to tell me to finish the job and shave it all off. All right. So Jing, tell us a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself to the audience. Who are you and who do you work for?
Jing
Oh, sure. My name is Jing Wen and I’m working for TC Energy and manufacturing and construction threat lead. So, you know, when people are thinking about manufacturing and construction, that’s something like huge bag, you will see those dusty construction site and heavy machinery. So what my daily job involves is actually a lot of office work. So when we’re talking about manufacturing pipeline threat, it’s mainly we refer to, you know, the threat that we created back during the manufacturing of the pipe. For example, pipe meal nominee, hot spot, and seam flaws, and construction introduced a threat such as gust wall flaws or vintage wrinkle band practice. So that’s the main five categories I’m doing as my daily work.
Rhett
You cover all of the fun ones.
Chris
Yeah, and that was such a good way to introduce it too. She goes, “It’s a lot of office work, working with all the threats that were introduced.” Like that’s so cool.
Rhett
And introduced quite some time ago. Like, again, not with pipelines that were built in the 2000s, but we’re talking about a lot of times pipelines built in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. So again, brief disclaimer. So Jing’s not representing TC, speaking on behalf of TC or anything like that. This is friendly conversation between engineers meant to improve the knowledge in the industry and help our operator and friends out there gain awareness. So we obviously brought you one to talk about hard spots today, which I understand you you you like hard spots?
Jing
I don’t like them.
Chris
We don’t like them.
Rhett
Yeah I don’t like you don’t like them. You’re you’re passionate about them.
Jing
Passion about them and I get paid for it.
Chris
There’s some reality to
Rhett
Oh, she is passionately paid for our spot. So, but help me, what was your, how did you come about in gain, what was your exposure to heart spots? How did you come to the position you are now as a pertain student?
Jing
Yeah, for sure. So that goes back to 2019. At that time, I had a great mentor, Dave Savage. He was very passionate about hard spots, and he introduced me to this world of hard spots, and it’s intriguing to the fact that a hard spot, actually, it is not a problem. It’s generally considered as stable, something resident. We can’t really do anything about it. I mean, the steel was making back, you know, our grandfather’s time. You can’t really chase back and to say, “Hey, you know what? There are some flaws. I mean, the technology and also the quality control system at that time, it is the best it can do. And, you know, those hard spots are resident and they are in the pipeline and, you know, they’re still in service. Nothing wrong with it until it comes with hard spot cracking. When it’s associated with the cracking, it increases the likelihood of introducing rapture possibility. So that becomes a threat concern and that’s what I’m dealing with every day. So my daily job regarding hard spot is actively I’m going searching my entire assets which I’m responsible to say hey what are other assets that is susceptible to hard spot and I’ll prioritize it.
Chris
It doesn’t mean you have them right? It just means you could be susceptible to them right?
Jing
Yeah it could be it’s a possibility and also prioritize it based upon a lot of things For example, whether it’s near any structure where we have people living around, that’s our first concern is the public safety. And the second is whether we have any other interacting features.
Rhett
So it’s interesting to me. So you very quickly delineated hard spots from hard spots with cracking. So at a high level, what you’re trying to do is identify the hard spots, then are you actively trying to identify hard spots that might have cracking at the same time?
Jing
Yeah. If it doesn’t crack, it’s less of a concern, but it cracks, I definitely concern, and there will be a lot of extensive efforts to be done.
Rhett
That seems to be a bit of a challenge to me, just to be honest. Without going into specifics, which I’m sure you can’t share. So if somebody was approaching hard spots for the first time, an operator out there, and I want to view that, because I think a lot of our target audience has, you’re going to have some that have familiarity similar to you, but we’re going to have a lot of our audience that’s not going to have familiarity with hard spots. And if they tried to go and find hard spots with cracking, that’s like, you’re not going to get an ILI report that says hard spot, hard spot with crack. So what advice suggestions, I mean, would you offer somebody who’s who’s gonna try and start managing the threat of hard spots? How do you go about trying to find a hard spot with a crack?
Jing
That’s a good question. So I have a ten -year -old daughter.
I often Chatting my work with her. It’s just you know,
I want to treat it treated her as a friend –
Rhett
I thought you were going to say you were gonna bring her on the field and she can find a heart spot with a crack. I was like oh, that’s amazing
Jing
For respect my ten -year -old is very much engineering -minded. So I talked to her, so she asked me, she’s a mom, what do you do? So I explained to her, and she’s really particular about the hard spot. She says, well, mom, I have a soft spot for chocolate. So what is a hard spot? I said a hard spot is opposite. You don’t like it. But what can you do? For example, the carrots and the celery have to pack for your lunch bag. That is so good. So I explained to her, how her, how do we manage hard spots? I said, well, so first of all, this is how we do it, is, you know, forget about the resident, the hard spot being there for many, many years, they never cause any problem, they’ve been quiet, but focus on the ones that are likely to give you any voices, or give you any trouble. For example, if this line is known to have external corrosion, is known to have SCC concerns, and then you’re readily available. You have MFO data, you have EMA data, that’s the line you start with if it’s a susceptible pipe. And from there, you prioritize your line, for example, for your entire assets. You have about 20 line or 100 lines, you prioritize the first five or first three, go after it.
Chris
So leverage. So you said something earlier that I really latched on to, right? So you said Susceptibility then you prioritize public safety and then you look for things that Interact. and so we’re kind of honing in on the Susceptibility side, right? And and Rhett did a great job of saying, you know When someone wants to start where do you start? And so what you’re suggesting is a great way to look at it is where do I already have already have ILI data, start with there. Because it’s kind of lower hanging fruit.
Rhett
And that’s in contrast, I’ve dealt with some operators like, hey, I just want to kick the tool, kick the tires, and I’m going to try a hard spot tool out on the line. I think that is one path, but your best, what I heard from you is if you combine that path with other existing information. So don’t choose just a convenient line, choose a line that you feel like you’ve got data you can build on.
Chris
So if I can, Jing, I really like this whole process of susceptible, prioritize, look for interaction. On the susceptibility side, you also reminded us, right? We see in regulation, I’m gonna hone in on the gas side a little bit, where basically we’re kind of, because we don’t deal with fatigue as much, we’re kind of in this mindset sometimes as an industry, not everybody, just generally speaking, there’s a population that you could see that people are saying, “It’s stable. It’s not a problem. It’s resident.” I hydro -tested this back in 1960, right? And I have TVC records of a subpart J hydro -test. These are stable. This is not a problem to me. What’s your response to that?
Jing
Until something changes.
Chris
Okay, so talk me through that. What do you mean?
Jing
So I explained to my ten year old about the Venn diagram.
Rhett
I’m like, oh the ten year old’s coming into this now. I’m like, next time I go to Calgary, we’re gonna have to meet the ten year old.
Jing
Yeah, my Jiana. So I explained to her, I said, you know, for the Venn diagram, you know, in order for us to really concern about and do something, we need to collect the three pieces. One is susceptible pipe. You know, we can, there are Different extent of what is susceptibility. For example, we can chase down to the plate to sourcing That is a little bit of above and beyond what’s what we can do now
Chris
Because a lot of operators may not be there right smaller operators They may be so struggling with getting TVC records for what’s in the ground, right?
Jing
Exactly
Chris
But let’s say they identify that they at least know what type of pipe it is, right? So they know the long seam type to start characterizing, you know, it’s vintage.
Jing
Exactly. So there are certain pipe manufacturers, certain vintage pipe and certain OD of the pipe that we had passed the failure history. So we can start from the past failure history. If this pipe is similar to what you have, likely that is susceptible.
Chris
It’s a flag.
Jing
Exactly.
Chris
It doesn’t mean you have them or that they’re an integrity threat yet, it’s just…
Jing
Screening
Chris
It’s susceptible.
Jing
Yeah.
Chris
Do I have them or not?
Jing
Exactly
Chris
Okay, we got to move it.
Rhett
So, back to this Venn diagram.
Chris
They haven’t interacted yet.
Jing
Yeah, and number two is whether you have a source of atomic hydrogen. Otomic hydrogen molecule is really, really small.
Chris
Yep.
Jing
And if you have homogeneity of the microstructure of the pipe so that little molecule will find its way to sway like free swim along the boundary of the grain and cause brittleness and once that brittleness get triggered by for example increased operating – level gets increased operating temperature essentially resulting higher pressure load yeah and then it likely to lead to a rapture
Chris
Okay cracking at first yeah cracking first cracking
Rhett
And what’s the next part is there a third element of the Venn diagram?
Jing
So the third element is the operating condition is how you operate for example if your pipe is always been operated on a 40 Fahrenheit and 900 psi for 50 years.
Rhett
Did you see how quickly she switched into US customary units there? Very impressive
Jing
International. By the way, I was educated in Michigan.
Rhett and Chris
Oh
Rhett
She is checking the boxes on international. She’s like, check, check, check, got it.
Jing
All right, coming back to the operational change. For example, if you have a flow reversal, the discharge becomes suction, suction becomes discharge. You have elevated the temperature and temperature increases, your pressure increases. That could potentially increase potentially increase the operating space level.
Rhett
Which is interesting that’s actually what they pointed to as a flow reversal in TSB. So yeah, how did your 10 -year -old take the Venn diagram? Did she get it and go?
Jing
Oh yeah, she loves it.
Rhett
So you know what I was explaining to my 12 -year -old yesterday? The importance of finance.
Chris
Is this cooking again?
Rhett
No, she wanted she wanted an iPhone and she found $5 a month for 36 months from Walmart and asked me if she could give me five bucks a month. So then I had to sit down with a packet of dimes and explain finance to her. And it was like you don’t finance phones. You finance expensive things. So she kind of got it after the third or fourth episode, for a third or fourth run through of me explaining. She’s like, wait, I own the phone. No, you don’t own the phone. The bank owns the phone until you buy the phone. So you’re explaining Venn diagrams. I’m explaining finance. This is fabulous.
Chris
Which is a big part of integrity if you think about it, right? prioritizing resources, most bang for the buck.
Rhett
And Chris is teaching his kids how to grow a mullet. So, this is actually a good place.
—
I really like, so you started with a breakdown of the Venn diagram and susceptibility and how to target hard spots. I think operators are gonna get a lot from that in their audience. I actually wanna take a break and when we come back, I wanna pick up on gaps in the industry ’cause I’m sure that there’s some of those areas we know than others and want to hear from you on that. So we’re going to take a break and hear from our sponsors. We’ll be right back in just a moment.
Kara:
Hi I am Kara Turner, I am the managing director and co -founder of ADV marketing. We get the honor of working with Rhett and Christopher to produce this crazy podcast and also work with them on any other initiatives that they have when it comes to marketing. And if you know them or listening to this podcast, you know that it gets pretty crazy around here. So we have a lot of fun with them. ADV Marketing is a full service business to business marketing agency. We specialize in service companies and technology companies. So if you are enjoying listening to this podcast and the fun that they’re having, reach out to us and see how we can make your marketing fun.
Rhett
Alright welcome back as we’re talking with Jing about hard spots in the industry. So I want to pick right back up where we left off Jing. So you did a really good job of laying out how you would approach hard spots and differentiating hard spots and hard spots with cracking. So picking back up on that vein of thought, let’s say you’ve identified a line because you’ve got such a rich history, you’ve got maybe multiple MFL runs or a single MFL run, you got geometry, you feel like you understand the condition of that line relative to our conventional threats pretty well. And you make a decision to run a hard spot tool, invest in ILI technology and find out what you’re going to get. Where does that journey go from there? What does the story look like? You get the report back, what do you do next?
Jing
All right. That’s my day to job 365, Right. All right. We’ll go from there. Tell us what you do. So once you have identified an asset you want to run the hard spot tool, my suggestion is to bundle that with your MFL because the hard spot tool is called dual MFL technology. So regardless if you are running hard spot or not, you need to run your regular MFL tool. So bundle that can save you cost and also you get the most updated MFO data to analyze in conjunction with your hard spot data. And let’s say you have run the tool and you have the report sitting on your desk. Before the report show up, seven days after the round, you’ll get QA /QC report. Make sure you check that QA /QC report really, really thorough to make sure that the amplitude is within the range, the speed is within the range, Because my understanding for hard spot identification and detection, it’s highly dependent on how you run that tool. If you run it the wrong way, you might not get the good data.
Chris
We like to say staying within the essential variables of the ILI system.
Rhett
And that’s something new –
Chris
Speed, wall thickness.
Rhett
What’s different about hard spots in the dual mag is you’ve got a high mag unit and then you’ve got a low MAG unit on the back and you’re speaking more about staying within the limits on the low MAG unit, which is the new area.
Chris
It’s either low MAG or residual, depending on what technology it is. So low MAG again being where it’s a calibrated MFL tool, residual where they just put sensors some distance downstream of your traditional MFL A tool.
Rhett
All right, so picking up QAQC report, got it?
Jing
Yeah. So for the report part from our experience, we could have over hundreds of feature reported. When we see feature, it means that we don’t know whether it is injurious or non -injurious. So it needs to be assessed. So that’s called a feature or anomaly. You could have hundreds of them, or you could potentially only have a few of them. So how do you make a decision whether you will act on it, or whether you assess it you know, deem that is safe or not. So that’s the next part is assessment, data assessment. So for hard spot data assessment, it is not for hard spot data alone. We usually, in conjunction with MFL data, to understand what is the external corrosion density. MFL density is a very good indicator of coding condition and also injunction of EMAT data. Once you know where you likely have some linear indications or surface breaking or anything that EMAT features, you know where the EMAT features, then you can do the data overlay to say, “Hey, if I have an EMAT feature here, I likely will increase the concerns.” And there are also a lot of other things to be considered. For example, the past the DIG history. So if you had direct assessment or you have any digs nearby you can pull that data to say hey what is a coding condition look like what is the environment as a soil look like whether I have you know alkalinity or I have a salinity of the soil whether the pH is less than six something like that.
Rhet
This is something very similar to SCC very similar
Jing
Yeah just a lot of it is a holistic review of the data. And once you have considered every angle of your data and then also consider about the access because you want to be friendly to your construction crew, make sure they can get there.
Chris
So is there a way, you mentioned a couple of things that I think are interesting, right? So you said, you know, density of MFL. So let’s get practical. So if you have a section of pipe within a string of pipe within a piggable segment that has a higher density of metal loss cause, you’re thinking you’re going to hone in there to see if there’s also hard spots. But it’s not because there’s hard spots, right? But rather, I think you’re now jumping to the point of hard spot interacting with something else.
Jing
It’s the atomic hydrogen source.
Chris
Which is where the coding comes in for the CP. Because the CP breaks down. So the higher CP, the more likely you are to…
Jing
Yeah, where you features that will CP it’s going to work extra harder. And also from our corrosion basics, we know that during the corrosion process, it produced atomic hydrogen. So that’s where the atomic hydrogen sourcing come from.
Rhett
Now, the other thing that was really interesting to me was you mentioned the EMAT features. I want to ask it, and if you can answer it, hopefully you can. Are you actually looking for an EMAT feature that would interact with a hard spot or just an increased prevalence of EMAT features in a region. So maybe if you saw an EMAT feature nearby in the same joint, that’s how you, so you’re using it, okay, like more proximity. You’re not actually trying to say, I don’t want to make sure the audience heard that. You’re not trying to say, I’m looking for a hard spot feature coincident with a crack.
Jing
No, it’s more on the joint or neighbor. So that may happen. That may happen, but that would be crisis. I mean, in my opinion, opinion that would be
Chris
That’s an immediate
Rhett
That’s an immediate it’s a red button
Chris
But again I think what we’re saying here is is it’s it really ties again back to susceptibility right is it’s you’re screening the line with the data you have yep and wherever you have an increased prevalence of a series of things that tell a story or coding means like a corrosion which means the CP is concentrating there therefore atomic hydrogen therefore More likely that a hard spot can be used the word trigger earlier, right? It can be triggered, it becomes more brittle, changing operations, potential incident.
Jing
Right to the point.
Chris
It sounds like you’re trying to find them before they find you.
Jing
Chasing game. I’m on the lead.
Jing
Alright, so once you…
Rhett
Jing, the hard spot hunter.
Jing
The bulldog.
Rhett
The hard spot bulldog.
Jing
All right, so once you have selected a location for excavation, next part is that you want to make sure that field NDE is downright. For example, the hard spot location accuracy, I mean, any tool has its location accuracy. So if you are just a pinpoint yourself to a 12 inch you know up and down it might not work. So what I would suggest is you know if you have located a GPS coordinates of that hard spot feature you know I open a 10 foot joint 10 foot lens and then what we have been successful is using a tool called a spine tool. So spine tool intended to find any surface in homogeneity. So For example, if you have a corrosion, you have surface breaking, have cracks, have microstructure change, spine tool will be able to find it. And once you do, it’s a screening tool. It’s kind of like laser scan.
Rhett
This is, I wanna make sure, this is an OD tool. Outside diameter. So you’re scanning with the spine tool and that’s SPYNE for the people that are out there. And you’re looking for surface inhomogeneities. On the outside surface, okay.
Jing
Yeah, once you do your scan, you find the potential areas that you are interested, and then you go, you do your night or wash, you grate it and you polish it, and then you measure that hardness. So, sometimes it takes a bit of redundancy effort to measure that again and again. ‘Cause sometimes the hard spot is really small. We have to find, identify like a rain drop, it’s so easy to get missed. So if you haven’t find it from the first round, refine your grids.
Chris
Do you need to find those?
Jing
Yeah.
Chris
You need to find those, the little bitty guys?
Jing
Yeah, yeah.
Rhett
So it’s interesting that is in like the actual hard spot definition from RIN2 was two inches. – Two inches is a minimum size.
Jing
Well, again, so let’s say if it’s not two inches, but we’re there. When we’re as We’ll just find you the tiny little guys until this we can validate the tool The tool might not be accurate and also for tool to call a hard spot I mean, you know the transition from base metal to elevated a harness. It takes a bit time, right? Yeah, so we got to give a little forgiveness there.
Chris
So we were talking I want to jump in so we were talking about the the ILI tool, right? So we have this in this particular case It is an MFL -based technology, some kind of dual MFL technology, whether it’s calibrated low field with the high or high with a trailing sensor. I wanna, the whole reason why we got here was ’cause REN2 the new gas rule, A -E -I -E, the mega rule, defined hard spots, right?
Jing
Yeah, it’s 327 right now, any direction, more than two inches.
Chris
Tie that back to ILI, right? So are we saying that you’re reporting threshold then? If you get an ILI report is 327 for now or talk to me about how the characterizing the hard spot relates back to the MFL and its capabilities broadly.
Jing
Yeah, that’s a good one. So reporting -wise, we’re not looking for 327 or 300 but now What we asked is any elevated hardness area that is deviated from the base metal for more than 50 right now. For example, if the base metal is 120, report me anything over 170. If the base metal is 150, report me anything over 200 right now. And we don’t care about the size. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big or small.
Chris
So that’s a little bit different, right? From your traditional ILI mentality, right? Because what we’re accustomed to as an industry is it’s finding stuff this deep in this long, because then I can do a burst pressure calculation or estimate it and then rank. I can rank them accordingly, right? Here we’re saying it’s a little bit different. Here’s saying this is a relative reporting, right? It’s if there is a delta of greater than 50 burnout, I want to know about it.
Jing
Yeah, it’s a deviation.
Chris
So but that also doesn’t mean that’s a problem yet though, right?
Jing
No, it’s just that, you know the first screening to identify a pool of features that we will potentially be interested in and apply our engineering assessment
Chris
because it’s not, talked us a little bit about your experience with elevated hardness right because there’s got to be a range of it’s elevated but it’s no risk elevated maybe risk elevated high risk
Jing
yeah so it’s an international woman’s day so I’m gonna screw our skin care over there as the analogy.
Chris
This is so good.
Rhett
I have no idea what this is going on.
Jing
I do have spots. I know in the market there are like a $1 ,000 kind of serum that is supposed to remove the dark spots from your face. I haven’t tried it and I couldn’t afford it but I can use that as an analogy. So if we are thinking hard spots are just like the dark spots on the face, right? Well, you’re still beautiful, regardless if you have a spot or not. So, Pipe could potentially be totally fine. It doesn’t, and not impact its serviceability.
Chris
Because it’s stable.
Jing
It’s exactly, it’s a pressure -containing capability. Yes, it’s not pretty. So what?
Chris
So it has pressure.
Rhett
But you said it’s still beautiful.
Chris
Yeah, so it could be, it could be 70 years old with hard spots. And it’s still pressure -containing. And as long as it’s not interacting with other, either environmental factors or defects, then it’s still pretty, it’s beautiful.
Jing
Yeah, it’s just like, you need to have a key to activate that cracking mechanism, unless you collect, you know, like Harry Potter. You need to collect a certain jewels then.
Rhett
Jing is on the analogies. We’ve got kids, Harry Potter, facial spots, we are going with it.
Chris
This is so good.
Rhett
Go back to Harry Potter, wait, what is it with, Harry Potter?
Jing
You know, Harry Potter, you gotta collect all those like, you know, jewelry in order to get that key and then you open that magic key, here’s the brand new world, right?
Chris
The horcruxes right.
Jing
Exactly, so a Hard spot, cracking to me, why I’m so passionate about it, is just like a treasure hunt.
Chris
Yeah, you gotta find them.
Jing
Yeah, I gotta find find to them, so I can kind of—
Rhett
There is another potential title for you Miss Producer. Hard spot to the treasure hunt.
Chris
So I still want to get to something a little bit tangible. I think we’re really hovering and we’re trying to find this stuff, right? So you’re kind of looking at your crystal ball or you’re looking at the lay of the land. But talk to us a little bit about, in your opinion, at what point do you become concerned about the hardness of a hard spot. Or are you saying you’re not?
Rhett
Is it a primary, so when you look at that feature listing, do you rely more on the data integration, or do you just start, nope, if it’s over, if the vendor reports it is over 327, I take action, and if they don’t, I don’t take action?
Jing
So there are two elements to it. For the folks that you have a special permit, if you have a hard prescribed language to tell you that you have EFW pipe. You will have hardness over 327 brino and any in any other direction is over two inches. Then you need to act according to that language. If it’s not if it’s in a gray area that you need to debate according to your internal procedure or your SME review and then there are six those six factors I would suggest you to consider. So first is look at your pipe and potentially look at particularly focused on the vintage of the pipe and if you read Kiefner’s North America line pipe history you would have possibly chased down to the plate sourcing to say what is likely to be the plate manufacture and from there you can you know whether you can you know the alarm or you know increase the alarm level of the sustainability and to take a look at your operating condition. Have you had a recent flow reversal? Have you had any temperature or pressure increase? What is the operating stress level you are at now? And the third is your CP. When I’m talking about CP, not just your on and off ratio, not just your CIS survey data, but also dwell into whether you have any recent installation of ground beds or rectifiers. Because once you you, um, animals that, you know, contributing send us spikes of current to your system that could potentially lead it to a concern.
Chris
Yeah. And you know, one of the first thing that came to mind is it’s a, and this is why it’s important to have threat leads, right? People who can focus on specific threats across your asset base.
Jing
That is my daily job.
Chris
So you have the time and the energy and the passion to invest, not just on an ILI tool and hope that the ILI tool can do your job for you, but for it to just be a data set that you can then integrate and begin to manage the integrity of your pipeline for this threat.
Jing
You’re absolutely right too. So the number four factor is the coding. So coding, you can find it from two different ways. One is what indicator as we mentioned, MFL density. If you have increased or higher density if you see a sudden change of your external corrosion density, well, that tells you something, that your coating is degraded. And two, you can find it from your past excavations. What exactly is the coating? Whether that coating is in good contact with your pipe. And also, you can find the soil -resistant, conductivity, resistivity, what’s your moisture level, all that, Sometimes a pH.
Rhett
It’s not as simple as just jumping on the hardness values unless you’re within a special permit line. Otherwise you’re the process that operators should be looking to follow is one of data integration and trying to understand
Chris
So if we had effects. It’s effect effect effect. It’s if you get an NFL based hard spot report You’re not necessarily going to dig it Right, it’s a data set for you to integrate to then continue your plan on trying to find out, do I have an issue?
Rhett
And you don’t need to dig.
Chris
And where?
Jing
Exactly.
Chris
Right, which is very different. I mean, that’s a behavioral difference in how we use ILI technology, right? We’re used to running an ILI technology and highlighting a specific feature and say, go dig this.
Rhett
Yep. So in the last couple of minutes we have, and I wanna drive us home and you’ve been a great guest, provided lots of valuable information. I’ll let you pick. Where do you see, where do we need to head as an industry on hard spots? Would you give me your top, maybe two, three at most, where do you think we need to focus our efforts to improve or address hard spots?
Chris
Your opinion.
Jing
Yeah. So currently I’m leading two projects with the PRCI Pipeline Research Council International. So, our focus, we have two focuses. One is to find why certain hard spots crack. That’s the susceptibility of hard spots cracking. It’s different from hard spots susceptibility. As we mentioned, you have hardspots. So what?
Chris
It’s still beautiful.
Jing
Our generation, our generation of grandfather, they have that and we got to live with it. Yeah, right. So what but we’re gonna have to prevent hard spots from cracking. And so that’s the focus number one And focus number two is the state of our art tool. I mean, I mean the the dual MFO tool It is still in an advancing stage So we got to help improve that tool regarding its POI, POD location accuracy sizing.
Rhett
But these have been out for a while I mean, they’ve been running art spot inspection since, what, early 2000s?
Chris
Yeah.
Rhett
And so you’re saying that there is an ongoing project or starting project to really define and improve the state of the art for hard spot technology.
Jing
Yeah, that’s actually one of the suggestions from the NTSB report to FIMSA that—
Chris
Which, right. – But it kind of makes sense, right? Because again, you’ll have indications, but when you start honing in on what an MFL does, right, It’s this the signal characteristics will change the reason why we use high high frequent high MAG levels is because you want to saturate the pipe so that it focuses on flux leakage However, when you’re looking at material changes, you’re looking at lower residual, because which are residuals are or calibrated low fields is because you’re trying to hone in on the microstructure influence on magnetic fields the permeability the magnetic permeability and And now it’s a little bit vaguer you’re not just looking for amplitudes you’re looking at system response to a material and now what if it’s not as hard in this plate or the size is smaller so it’s actually kind of complex right complex doesn’t mean bad it just means we need to better understand it which makes sense.
Jing
We have the possibility of the improvement.
Rhett
Yeah so those two efforts interesting because both of those are PRCI efforts. What information would you recommend maybe somebody who’s not a PRCI member which can be challenging to get involved in that if you’re not in PRCI member? What information is out there made for people who aren’t PRCI members?
Jing
Yeah, there are two publications I can recommend for found read. One is Kiefner’s book regarding North America’s history –
Rhett
That’s the red book. The red ASME book. If you don’t have the red ASME book as either an operator or a consultant, you to have that book.
Jing
Yeah, it’s a good book to start with. And regarding ILI Tool, I will recommend a paper published from last year’s IPC. It’s called “Know Your Enemy. Improvements in managing the…” Let me take a look at my notes. “Managing the Thread of a Hot Spot” by Rosen.
Rhett
That was, yeah, by Con Tran and Simon Slater. It was a good paper.
Jing
And also, we are looking at updating the effort Inga started back in 2005. It’s the integrity characteristics of vintage pipeline. As we said, hard spot is a vintage problem.
Rhett
Wow, all right, so some good information out there. So, Jing, I wanna say thanks for joining us on the show today. Do you have any parting thoughts you’d like to leave with the audience?
Jing
The last analogy, I’m really good at it.
Chris
Oh! (laughs)
Rhett
The last analogy, here we go!
Chris
I think that’s – That’s it. I think– –
Rhett
The title is Analogies, Analogies with Jig?
Chris
Yeah, it’s the last Analogy with Jig. (laughing)
Jing
All right, a lot of playing puzzles. I have loads of puzzles at home. So for hard spot, I would say it’s a very baby -ish puzzle. We don’t need to go, you know, 5 ,000 pieces or 1,000 pieces. It’s only—
Chris
They’re two by two squares.
Jing
Yeah, 10 or 20 pieces. So take a look at it from a holistic approach. You need to collect all the puzzle pieces together to have a picture. Don’t just narrow to just one particular piece and says, you know what, let me focus on that 327 Brino. Guarantee you that’s not working because in order to remember that Venn diagram, you need to have a sustainability, atomic hydrogen and also environment contribution.
Chris
It’s such a good analogy too, right? Because again, by the two inch by two inch with the puzzle pieces, it’s a bigger piece. While you could try to find the little crack with an ILI in a hard spot, those are little pieces. The guidance is find the big pieces, put them together. God, that’s so good.
Jing
I’ve got the idea of my my side job. I’m gonna print puzzle pieces with you have that mohawk here with the mullet
Rhett
We got you we got a gift for our guest host it’s not a puzzle it’s not but you will find it useful this time we’re gonna close out the episode
Chris
As an as a first -time guest and an international guest we wanted to give you something what the way I would say something very H -town, and we have the Houston livestock show rodeo that’s ongoing so we wanted to give you a small small tokens you could take it back and remember us. I know Calgary has the stampede, but it’s still sorry it’s still second best to Houston Lifestyle.
Jing
Okay, I hope I’m not getting the $1 ,000 piece of spot remover.
Chris
So we give you the small gift if you don’t mind. Go on ahead and open it up.
Jing
Does the color match with my dress today?
Rhett
Yeah! This is so good.
Jing
Thank you Chris. Thanks Rhett. I like it.
Rhett
Oh well you got a chance to wear it tonight. So I want to thank Jing for coming join us on the show. We hope you enjoyed today’s edition of Pipeline Things and we look forward. Upcoming, this is the end of our season one arc. Our next arc you can look forward to will be covering ILI technology with all of our vendors at PPIM I think you’re gonna love it. Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you again.
On today’s episode of Pipeline Things, we take on heart spots with Jing Wang from TC
Energy. It was fantastic. We covered puzzle pieces, analogies, Harry Potter, the rodeo, Venn diagram, teaching finance and Venn diagrams to 10 year olds.
Chris
It’s fantastic.
Rhett
It was a great episode. No, it really
Chris
Put the puzzle pieces together. Absolutely, a completely packed episode with information, lots of great takeaways on hard spots, think you’ll enjoy it. Thanks for joining us.
Rhett
All right. Welcome to today’s episode of Pipeline Things. I am your host, Rhett Dotson, my co -host, Mr. Christopher De Leon. And again, we are going to have a super exciting episode, at least I am excited about today’s episode and we’ve got a super fun guest. It’s going to be lots of announcements, but you know, Chris, it’s rodeo season right now in Houston.
Chris
It’s like Christmas, Crawford season rodeo, like it’s fantastic.
Rhett
But you know what’s interesting, so we were at the rodeo last night, and I was also back in Louisiana this weekend and there’s some tie ins here, not just crawfish and the tie in. One of my family members is a middle school teacher and she told me, she’s like, you know, she said mullets have come back in style. So they have mullets. But she’s like, my seventh graders think they invented the haircut. She’s like, so my seventh graders come in and –
Chris
Have they not seen Joe dirt?
Rhett
No! They haven’t seen Joe dirt and they have never heard of Billy Ray Cyrus, which is great. And the tie is we saw a lot of mullets at the rodeo last night.
Chris
Yeah, it’s real.
Rhett
Right. So yeah mullets have come back. Have you
ever thought about growing a mullet? You know, did you try as a kid?
Chris
No.
Rhett
Did you try as an adult?
Chris
Mm -hmm. It’s uh, I feel like a mullet is almost a little bit of a culture and uh-
Rhett
Are you gonna let Leo grow a mullet?
Chris
Well, Leo can do whatever he wants.
Rhett
Yeah, well wait, all right. Let me maybe the responsible party, Will Amanda let Leo grow a mullet?
Chris
I think Amanda would as well. I think if we were to tie rodeo and mullets, it almost makes me wonder a bit like, if he’s gonna wear a mullet and he’s gonna be at the rodeo, it makes me think of what event he would do, right? Would it be bronc riding? Would it be the wagon races? Would it be, bull riding?
Rhett
You see it’s really funny you mentioned that. I noticed a body type in each of the
—
I was starting to say wagon racing, but I don’t know if he’s big enough.
Chris
You know what it might be wagon racing, depending on how long the mullet is just flying back.
Rhett
The wagon racing guys were some big dudes.
Chris
Yeah, because you gotta lean on the inside when they turn.
Rhett
Yeah, but I thought it’d be like a small skinny, like a jockey, right? Smaller, better? No, clearly in wagon racing.
Chris
Well you gotta lean, brother.
Rhett
Yeah, I guess so. Um, so here’s, here’s, here’s the tie in for, uh, or for, for, for, let me try that again. Here’s the tie in for mullets to what we are going to talk about today. It’s really funny that all these kids think they invented mullets and mullets went out of fashion a long time ago and then they have popped back up on the scene. Clearly.
Chris
I was wondering, you know, we see that happen generationally, right? Where something goes out of style, then it comes back like I also saw mom jeans are coming back now.
Rhett
So follow up on our last episode I feel kind of like that’s hard spots like a lot of work was done on hard spots back in late 90s early 2000s and they were kind of in vogue and then we didn’t hear anything about hard spots for a
while and now as an industry—
Chris
It’s one of those like old new problems.
Rhett
So hard spots mullets hard spots are the mullet pipeline integrity throughout of the world.
Chris
You know, I think it depends.
Rhett
My achy breaky, I’m trying to think how I can go with that. I don’t know if I can make that work.
Chris
Well I can’t tell you this, I guarantee you that our guest is going to help us.
Rhett
So I tell you what, I’m pretty excited about the guest for a couple of reasons. When we did the hard spot episode, this is the first name that came to my mind, because this particular individual is super passionate about hard spots, Knowledgeable on the subject.
Chris
Has experience.
Rhett
Has experience and likes to dig in. So I think it’s time.
Chris
And there’s also another segue.
Rhett
What’s that?
Chris
To this, is it’s also International Women’s Day.
Rhett
So you’re already doing it, so I would like to welcome our guests. So our guest for today’s episode is Mr. Jing Wang, Mr. Jing Wang. Miss.
—
We are gonna have to re -film this. I feel like we might have to re -film it, but we are doing it live.
Jing
Hi, Chris.
Rhett
Hi, it’s the Jing Wang, yes, from TC Energy. And it’s super exciting ’cause Jing is actually our first female guest on the show. Female engineer. And as Chris pointed out, on the heels of International Women’s Day?
Chris
Yeah. It couldn’t be more perfect.
Jing
So I’m international ’cause I’m from Canada.
Chris
Yeah. – That’s what—
Rhett
It works.
Chris
She’s our first Canadian guest as well.
Jing
Oh yeah.
Chris
How great is that? –
Rhett
There are multiple firsts on this episode. That’s, I can see now as producers going to run with that as the theme, multiple firsts and hard spots. I’m already giving you the title.
Chris
So they’re going to think you’re going to get a mullet for the first time. You know what, can I be real with you? If you went to my barber, he would do like a really cool high taper and just leave it long in the back. And you could kind of say it’s a mullet.
Rhett
That’s called a rat tail. So we, those were called rat tails when I was a kid growing up and I’m not more, if I come home with a rat tail or a mullet, Morgan’s just going to tell me to finish the job and shave it all off. All right. So Jing, tell us a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself to the audience. Who are you and who do you work for?
Jing
Oh, sure. My name is Jing Wen and I’m working for TC Energy and manufacturing and construction threat lead. So, you know, when people are thinking about manufacturing and construction, that’s something like huge bag, you will see those dusty construction site and heavy machinery. So what my daily job involves is actually a lot of office work. So when we’re talking about manufacturing pipeline threat, it’s mainly we refer to, you know, the threat that we created back during the manufacturing of the pipe. For example, pipe meal nominee, hot spot, and seam flaws, and construction introduced a threat such as gust wall flaws or vintage wrinkle band practice. So that’s the main five categories I’m doing as my daily work.
Rhett
You cover all of the fun ones.
Chris
Yeah, and that was such a good way to introduce it too. She goes, “It’s a lot of office work, working with all the threats that were introduced.” Like that’s so cool.
Rhett
And introduced quite some time ago. Like, again, not with pipelines that were built in the 2000s, but we’re talking about a lot of times pipelines built in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. So again, brief disclaimer. So Jing’s not representing TC, speaking on behalf of TC or anything like that. This is friendly conversation between engineers meant to improve the knowledge in the industry and help our operator and friends out there gain awareness. So we obviously brought you one to talk about hard spots today, which I understand you you you like hard spots?
Jing
I don’t like them.
Chris
We don’t like them.
Rhett
Yeah I don’t like you don’t like them. You’re you’re passionate about them.
Jing
Passion about them and I get paid for it.
Chris
There’s some reality to
Rhett
Oh, she is passionately paid for our spot. So, but help me, what was your, how did you come about in gain, what was your exposure to heart spots? How did you come to the position you are now as a pertain student?
Jing
Yeah, for sure. So that goes back to 2019. At that time, I had a great mentor, Dave Savage. He was very passionate about hard spots, and he introduced me to this world of hard spots, and it’s intriguing to the fact that a hard spot, actually, it is not a problem. It’s generally considered as stable, something resident. We can’t really do anything about it. I mean, the steel was making back, you know, our grandfather’s time. You can’t really chase back and to say, “Hey, you know what? There are some flaws. I mean, the technology and also the quality control system at that time, it is the best it can do. And, you know, those hard spots are resident and they are in the pipeline and, you know, they’re still in service. Nothing wrong with it until it comes with hard spot cracking. When it’s associated with the cracking, it increases the likelihood of introducing rapture possibility. So that becomes a threat concern and that’s what I’m dealing with every day. So my daily job regarding hard spot is actively I’m going searching my entire assets which I’m responsible to say hey what are other assets that is susceptible to hard spot and I’ll prioritize it.
Chris
It doesn’t mean you have them right? It just means you could be susceptible to them right?
Jing
Yeah it could be it’s a possibility and also prioritize it based upon a lot of things For example, whether it’s near any structure where we have people living around, that’s our first concern is the public safety. And the second is whether we have any other interacting features.
Rhett
So it’s interesting to me. So you very quickly delineated hard spots from hard spots with cracking. So at a high level, what you’re trying to do is identify the hard spots, then are you actively trying to identify hard spots that might have cracking at the same time?
Jing
Yeah. If it doesn’t crack, it’s less of a concern, but it cracks, I definitely concern, and there will be a lot of extensive efforts to be done.
Rhett
That seems to be a bit of a challenge to me, just to be honest. Without going into specifics, which I’m sure you can’t share. So if somebody was approaching hard spots for the first time, an operator out there, and I want to view that, because I think a lot of our target audience has, you’re going to have some that have familiarity similar to you, but we’re going to have a lot of our audience that’s not going to have familiarity with hard spots. And if they tried to go and find hard spots with cracking, that’s like, you’re not going to get an ILI report that says hard spot, hard spot with crack. So what advice suggestions, I mean, would you offer somebody who’s who’s gonna try and start managing the threat of hard spots? How do you go about trying to find a hard spot with a crack?
Jing
That’s a good question. So I have a ten -year -old daughter.
I often Chatting my work with her. It’s just you know,
I want to treat it treated her as a friend –
Rhett
I thought you were going to say you were gonna bring her on the field and she can find a heart spot with a crack. I was like oh, that’s amazing
Jing
For respect my ten -year -old is very much engineering -minded. So I talked to her, so she asked me, she’s a mom, what do you do? So I explained to her, and she’s really particular about the hard spot. She says, well, mom, I have a soft spot for chocolate. So what is a hard spot? I said a hard spot is opposite. You don’t like it. But what can you do? For example, the carrots and the celery have to pack for your lunch bag. That is so good. So I explained to her, how her, how do we manage hard spots? I said, well, so first of all, this is how we do it, is, you know, forget about the resident, the hard spot being there for many, many years, they never cause any problem, they’ve been quiet, but focus on the ones that are likely to give you any voices, or give you any trouble. For example, if this line is known to have external corrosion, is known to have SCC concerns, and then you’re readily available. You have MFO data, you have EMA data, that’s the line you start with if it’s a susceptible pipe. And from there, you prioritize your line, for example, for your entire assets. You have about 20 line or 100 lines, you prioritize the first five or first three, go after it.
Chris
So leverage. So you said something earlier that I really latched on to, right? So you said Susceptibility then you prioritize public safety and then you look for things that Interact. and so we’re kind of honing in on the Susceptibility side, right? And and Rhett did a great job of saying, you know When someone wants to start where do you start? And so what you’re suggesting is a great way to look at it is where do I already have already have ILI data, start with there. Because it’s kind of lower hanging fruit.
Rhett
And that’s in contrast, I’ve dealt with some operators like, hey, I just want to kick the tool, kick the tires, and I’m going to try a hard spot tool out on the line. I think that is one path, but your best, what I heard from you is if you combine that path with other existing information. So don’t choose just a convenient line, choose a line that you feel like you’ve got data you can build on.
Chris
So if I can, Jing, I really like this whole process of susceptible, prioritize, look for interaction. On the susceptibility side, you also reminded us, right? We see in regulation, I’m gonna hone in on the gas side a little bit, where basically we’re kind of, because we don’t deal with fatigue as much, we’re kind of in this mindset sometimes as an industry, not everybody, just generally speaking, there’s a population that you could see that people are saying, “It’s stable. It’s not a problem. It’s resident.” I hydro -tested this back in 1960, right? And I have TVC records of a subpart J hydro -test. These are stable. This is not a problem to me. What’s your response to that?
Jing
Until something changes.
Chris
Okay, so talk me through that. What do you mean?
Jing
So I explained to my ten year old about the Venn diagram.
Rhett
I’m like, oh the ten year old’s coming into this now. I’m like, next time I go to Calgary, we’re gonna have to meet the ten year old.
Jing
Yeah, my Jiana. So I explained to her, I said, you know, for the Venn diagram, you know, in order for us to really concern about and do something, we need to collect the three pieces. One is susceptible pipe. You know, we can, there are Different extent of what is susceptibility. For example, we can chase down to the plate to sourcing That is a little bit of above and beyond what’s what we can do now
Chris
Because a lot of operators may not be there right smaller operators They may be so struggling with getting TVC records for what’s in the ground, right?
Jing
Exactly
Chris
But let’s say they identify that they at least know what type of pipe it is, right? So they know the long seam type to start characterizing, you know, it’s vintage.
Jing
Exactly. So there are certain pipe manufacturers, certain vintage pipe and certain OD of the pipe that we had passed the failure history. So we can start from the past failure history. If this pipe is similar to what you have, likely that is susceptible.
Chris
It’s a flag.
Jing
Exactly.
Chris
It doesn’t mean you have them or that they’re an integrity threat yet, it’s just…
Jing
Screening
Chris
It’s susceptible.
Jing
Yeah.
Chris
Do I have them or not?
Jing
Exactly
Chris
Okay, we got to move it.
Rhett
So, back to this Venn diagram.
Chris
They haven’t interacted yet.
Jing
Yeah, and number two is whether you have a source of atomic hydrogen. Otomic hydrogen molecule is really, really small.
Chris
Yep.
Jing
And if you have homogeneity of the microstructure of the pipe so that little molecule will find its way to sway like free swim along the boundary of the grain and cause brittleness and once that brittleness get triggered by for example increased operating – level gets increased operating temperature essentially resulting higher pressure load yeah and then it likely to lead to a rapture
Chris
Okay cracking at first yeah cracking first cracking
Rhett
And what’s the next part is there a third element of the Venn diagram?
Jing
So the third element is the operating condition is how you operate for example if your pipe is always been operated on a 40 Fahrenheit and 900 psi for 50 years.
Rhett
Did you see how quickly she switched into US customary units there? Very impressive
Jing
International. By the way, I was educated in Michigan.
Rhett and Chris
Oh
Rhett
She is checking the boxes on international. She’s like, check, check, check, got it.
Jing
All right, coming back to the operational change. For example, if you have a flow reversal, the discharge becomes suction, suction becomes discharge. You have elevated the temperature and temperature increases, your pressure increases. That could potentially increase potentially increase the operating space level.
Rhett
Which is interesting that’s actually what they pointed to as a flow reversal in TSB. So yeah, how did your 10 -year -old take the Venn diagram? Did she get it and go?
Jing
Oh yeah, she loves it.
Rhett
So you know what I was explaining to my 12 -year -old yesterday? The importance of finance.
Chris
Is this cooking again?
Rhett
No, she wanted she wanted an iPhone and she found $5 a month for 36 months from Walmart and asked me if she could give me five bucks a month. So then I had to sit down with a packet of dimes and explain finance to her. And it was like you don’t finance phones. You finance expensive things. So she kind of got it after the third or fourth episode, for a third or fourth run through of me explaining. She’s like, wait, I own the phone. No, you don’t own the phone. The bank owns the phone until you buy the phone. So you’re explaining Venn diagrams. I’m explaining finance. This is fabulous.
Chris
Which is a big part of integrity if you think about it, right? prioritizing resources, most bang for the buck.
Rhett
And Chris is teaching his kids how to grow a mullet. So, this is actually a good place.
—
I really like, so you started with a breakdown of the Venn diagram and susceptibility and how to target hard spots. I think operators are gonna get a lot from that in their audience. I actually wanna take a break and when we come back, I wanna pick up on gaps in the industry ’cause I’m sure that there’s some of those areas we know than others and want to hear from you on that. So we’re going to take a break and hear from our sponsors. We’ll be right back in just a moment.
Kara:
Hi I am Kara Turner, I am the managing director and co -founder of ADV marketing. We get the honor of working with Rhett and Christopher to produce this crazy podcast and also work with them on any other initiatives that they have when it comes to marketing. And if you know them or listening to this podcast, you know that it gets pretty crazy around here. So we have a lot of fun with them. ADV Marketing is a full service business to business marketing agency. We specialize in service companies and technology companies. So if you are enjoying listening to this podcast and the fun that they’re having, reach out to us and see how we can make your marketing fun.
Rhett
Alright welcome back as we’re talking with Jing about hard spots in the industry. So I want to pick right back up where we left off Jing. So you did a really good job of laying out how you would approach hard spots and differentiating hard spots and hard spots with cracking. So picking back up on that vein of thought, let’s say you’ve identified a line because you’ve got such a rich history, you’ve got maybe multiple MFL runs or a single MFL run, you got geometry, you feel like you understand the condition of that line relative to our conventional threats pretty well. And you make a decision to run a hard spot tool, invest in ILI technology and find out what you’re going to get. Where does that journey go from there? What does the story look like? You get the report back, what do you do next?
Jing
All right. That’s my day to job 365, Right. All right. We’ll go from there. Tell us what you do. So once you have identified an asset you want to run the hard spot tool, my suggestion is to bundle that with your MFL because the hard spot tool is called dual MFL technology. So regardless if you are running hard spot or not, you need to run your regular MFL tool. So bundle that can save you cost and also you get the most updated MFO data to analyze in conjunction with your hard spot data. And let’s say you have run the tool and you have the report sitting on your desk. Before the report show up, seven days after the round, you’ll get QA /QC report. Make sure you check that QA /QC report really, really thorough to make sure that the amplitude is within the range, the speed is within the range, Because my understanding for hard spot identification and detection, it’s highly dependent on how you run that tool. If you run it the wrong way, you might not get the good data.
Chris
We like to say staying within the essential variables of the ILI system.
Rhett
And that’s something new –
Chris
Speed, wall thickness.
Rhett
What’s different about hard spots in the dual mag is you’ve got a high mag unit and then you’ve got a low MAG unit on the back and you’re speaking more about staying within the limits on the low MAG unit, which is the new area.
Chris
It’s either low MAG or residual, depending on what technology it is. So low MAG again being where it’s a calibrated MFL tool, residual where they just put sensors some distance downstream of your traditional MFL A tool.
Rhett
All right, so picking up QAQC report, got it?
Jing
Yeah. So for the report part from our experience, we could have over hundreds of feature reported. When we see feature, it means that we don’t know whether it is injurious or non -injurious. So it needs to be assessed. So that’s called a feature or anomaly. You could have hundreds of them, or you could potentially only have a few of them. So how do you make a decision whether you will act on it, or whether you assess it you know, deem that is safe or not. So that’s the next part is assessment, data assessment. So for hard spot data assessment, it is not for hard spot data alone. We usually, in conjunction with MFL data, to understand what is the external corrosion density. MFL density is a very good indicator of coding condition and also injunction of EMAT data. Once you know where you likely have some linear indications or surface breaking or anything that EMAT features, you know where the EMAT features, then you can do the data overlay to say, “Hey, if I have an EMAT feature here, I likely will increase the concerns.” And there are also a lot of other things to be considered. For example, the past the DIG history. So if you had direct assessment or you have any digs nearby you can pull that data to say hey what is a coding condition look like what is the environment as a soil look like whether I have you know alkalinity or I have a salinity of the soil whether the pH is less than six something like that.
Rhet
This is something very similar to SCC very similar
Jing
Yeah just a lot of it is a holistic review of the data. And once you have considered every angle of your data and then also consider about the access because you want to be friendly to your construction crew, make sure they can get there.
Chris
So is there a way, you mentioned a couple of things that I think are interesting, right? So you said, you know, density of MFL. So let’s get practical. So if you have a section of pipe within a string of pipe within a piggable segment that has a higher density of metal loss cause, you’re thinking you’re going to hone in there to see if there’s also hard spots. But it’s not because there’s hard spots, right? But rather, I think you’re now jumping to the point of hard spot interacting with something else.
Jing
It’s the atomic hydrogen source.
Chris
Which is where the coding comes in for the CP. Because the CP breaks down. So the higher CP, the more likely you are to…
Jing
Yeah, where you features that will CP it’s going to work extra harder. And also from our corrosion basics, we know that during the corrosion process, it produced atomic hydrogen. So that’s where the atomic hydrogen sourcing come from.
Rhett
Now, the other thing that was really interesting to me was you mentioned the EMAT features. I want to ask it, and if you can answer it, hopefully you can. Are you actually looking for an EMAT feature that would interact with a hard spot or just an increased prevalence of EMAT features in a region. So maybe if you saw an EMAT feature nearby in the same joint, that’s how you, so you’re using it, okay, like more proximity. You’re not actually trying to say, I don’t want to make sure the audience heard that. You’re not trying to say, I’m looking for a hard spot feature coincident with a crack.
Jing
No, it’s more on the joint or neighbor. So that may happen. That may happen, but that would be crisis. I mean, in my opinion, opinion that would be
Chris
That’s an immediate
Rhett
That’s an immediate it’s a red button
Chris
But again I think what we’re saying here is is it’s it really ties again back to susceptibility right is it’s you’re screening the line with the data you have yep and wherever you have an increased prevalence of a series of things that tell a story or coding means like a corrosion which means the CP is concentrating there therefore atomic hydrogen therefore More likely that a hard spot can be used the word trigger earlier, right? It can be triggered, it becomes more brittle, changing operations, potential incident.
Jing
Right to the point.
Chris
It sounds like you’re trying to find them before they find you.
Jing
Chasing game. I’m on the lead.
Jing
Alright, so once you…
Rhett
Jing, the hard spot hunter.
Jing
The bulldog.
Rhett
The hard spot bulldog.
Jing
All right, so once you have selected a location for excavation, next part is that you want to make sure that field NDE is downright. For example, the hard spot location accuracy, I mean, any tool has its location accuracy. So if you are just a pinpoint yourself to a 12 inch you know up and down it might not work. So what I would suggest is you know if you have located a GPS coordinates of that hard spot feature you know I open a 10 foot joint 10 foot lens and then what we have been successful is using a tool called a spine tool. So spine tool intended to find any surface in homogeneity. So For example, if you have a corrosion, you have surface breaking, have cracks, have microstructure change, spine tool will be able to find it. And once you do, it’s a screening tool. It’s kind of like laser scan.
Rhett
This is, I wanna make sure, this is an OD tool. Outside diameter. So you’re scanning with the spine tool and that’s SPYNE for the people that are out there. And you’re looking for surface inhomogeneities. On the outside surface, okay.
Jing
Yeah, once you do your scan, you find the potential areas that you are interested, and then you go, you do your night or wash, you grate it and you polish it, and then you measure that hardness. So, sometimes it takes a bit of redundancy effort to measure that again and again. ‘Cause sometimes the hard spot is really small. We have to find, identify like a rain drop, it’s so easy to get missed. So if you haven’t find it from the first round, refine your grids.
Chris
Do you need to find those?
Jing
Yeah.
Chris
You need to find those, the little bitty guys?
Jing
Yeah, yeah.
Rhett
So it’s interesting that is in like the actual hard spot definition from RIN2 was two inches. – Two inches is a minimum size.
Jing
Well, again, so let’s say if it’s not two inches, but we’re there. When we’re as We’ll just find you the tiny little guys until this we can validate the tool The tool might not be accurate and also for tool to call a hard spot I mean, you know the transition from base metal to elevated a harness. It takes a bit time, right? Yeah, so we got to give a little forgiveness there.
Chris
So we were talking I want to jump in so we were talking about the the ILI tool, right? So we have this in this particular case It is an MFL -based technology, some kind of dual MFL technology, whether it’s calibrated low field with the high or high with a trailing sensor. I wanna, the whole reason why we got here was ’cause REN2 the new gas rule, A -E -I -E, the mega rule, defined hard spots, right?
Jing
Yeah, it’s 327 right now, any direction, more than two inches.
Chris
Tie that back to ILI, right? So are we saying that you’re reporting threshold then? If you get an ILI report is 327 for now or talk to me about how the characterizing the hard spot relates back to the MFL and its capabilities broadly.
Jing
Yeah, that’s a good one. So reporting -wise, we’re not looking for 327 or 300 but now What we asked is any elevated hardness area that is deviated from the base metal for more than 50 right now. For example, if the base metal is 120, report me anything over 170. If the base metal is 150, report me anything over 200 right now. And we don’t care about the size. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big or small.
Chris
So that’s a little bit different, right? From your traditional ILI mentality, right? Because what we’re accustomed to as an industry is it’s finding stuff this deep in this long, because then I can do a burst pressure calculation or estimate it and then rank. I can rank them accordingly, right? Here we’re saying it’s a little bit different. Here’s saying this is a relative reporting, right? It’s if there is a delta of greater than 50 burnout, I want to know about it.
Jing
Yeah, it’s a deviation.
Chris
So but that also doesn’t mean that’s a problem yet though, right?
Jing
No, it’s just that, you know the first screening to identify a pool of features that we will potentially be interested in and apply our engineering assessment
Chris
because it’s not, talked us a little bit about your experience with elevated hardness right because there’s got to be a range of it’s elevated but it’s no risk elevated maybe risk elevated high risk
Jing
yeah so it’s an international woman’s day so I’m gonna screw our skin care over there as the analogy.
Chris
This is so good.
Rhett
I have no idea what this is going on.
Jing
I do have spots. I know in the market there are like a $1 ,000 kind of serum that is supposed to remove the dark spots from your face. I haven’t tried it and I couldn’t afford it but I can use that as an analogy. So if we are thinking hard spots are just like the dark spots on the face, right? Well, you’re still beautiful, regardless if you have a spot or not. So, Pipe could potentially be totally fine. It doesn’t, and not impact its serviceability.
Chris
Because it’s stable.
Jing
It’s exactly, it’s a pressure -containing capability. Yes, it’s not pretty. So what?
Chris
So it has pressure.
Rhett
But you said it’s still beautiful.
Chris
Yeah, so it could be, it could be 70 years old with hard spots. And it’s still pressure -containing. And as long as it’s not interacting with other, either environmental factors or defects, then it’s still pretty, it’s beautiful.
Jing
Yeah, it’s just like, you need to have a key to activate that cracking mechanism, unless you collect, you know, like Harry Potter. You need to collect a certain jewels then.
Rhett
Jing is on the analogies. We’ve got kids, Harry Potter, facial spots, we are going with it.
Chris
This is so good.
Rhett
Go back to Harry Potter, wait, what is it with, Harry Potter?
Jing
You know, Harry Potter, you gotta collect all those like, you know, jewelry in order to get that key and then you open that magic key, here’s the brand new world, right?
Chris
The horcruxes right.
Jing
Exactly, so a Hard spot, cracking to me, why I’m so passionate about it, is just like a treasure hunt.
Chris
Yeah, you gotta find them.
Jing
Yeah, I gotta find find to them, so I can kind of—
Rhett
There is another potential title for you Miss Producer. Hard spot to the treasure hunt.
Chris
So I still want to get to something a little bit tangible. I think we’re really hovering and we’re trying to find this stuff, right? So you’re kind of looking at your crystal ball or you’re looking at the lay of the land. But talk to us a little bit about, in your opinion, at what point do you become concerned about the hardness of a hard spot. Or are you saying you’re not?
Rhett
Is it a primary, so when you look at that feature listing, do you rely more on the data integration, or do you just start, nope, if it’s over, if the vendor reports it is over 327, I take action, and if they don’t, I don’t take action?
Jing
So there are two elements to it. For the folks that you have a special permit, if you have a hard prescribed language to tell you that you have EFW pipe. You will have hardness over 327 brino and any in any other direction is over two inches. Then you need to act according to that language. If it’s not if it’s in a gray area that you need to debate according to your internal procedure or your SME review and then there are six those six factors I would suggest you to consider. So first is look at your pipe and potentially look at particularly focused on the vintage of the pipe and if you read Kiefner’s North America line pipe history you would have possibly chased down to the plate sourcing to say what is likely to be the plate manufacture and from there you can you know whether you can you know the alarm or you know increase the alarm level of the sustainability and to take a look at your operating condition. Have you had a recent flow reversal? Have you had any temperature or pressure increase? What is the operating stress level you are at now? And the third is your CP. When I’m talking about CP, not just your on and off ratio, not just your CIS survey data, but also dwell into whether you have any recent installation of ground beds or rectifiers. Because once you you, um, animals that, you know, contributing send us spikes of current to your system that could potentially lead it to a concern.
Chris
Yeah. And you know, one of the first thing that came to mind is it’s a, and this is why it’s important to have threat leads, right? People who can focus on specific threats across your asset base.
Jing
That is my daily job.
Chris
So you have the time and the energy and the passion to invest, not just on an ILI tool and hope that the ILI tool can do your job for you, but for it to just be a data set that you can then integrate and begin to manage the integrity of your pipeline for this threat.
Jing
You’re absolutely right too. So the number four factor is the coding. So coding, you can find it from two different ways. One is what indicator as we mentioned, MFL density. If you have increased or higher density if you see a sudden change of your external corrosion density, well, that tells you something, that your coating is degraded. And two, you can find it from your past excavations. What exactly is the coating? Whether that coating is in good contact with your pipe. And also, you can find the soil -resistant, conductivity, resistivity, what’s your moisture level, all that, Sometimes a pH.
Rhett
It’s not as simple as just jumping on the hardness values unless you’re within a special permit line. Otherwise you’re the process that operators should be looking to follow is one of data integration and trying to understand
Chris
So if we had effects. It’s effect effect effect. It’s if you get an NFL based hard spot report You’re not necessarily going to dig it Right, it’s a data set for you to integrate to then continue your plan on trying to find out, do I have an issue?
Rhett
And you don’t need to dig.
Chris
And where?
Jing
Exactly.
Chris
Right, which is very different. I mean, that’s a behavioral difference in how we use ILI technology, right? We’re used to running an ILI technology and highlighting a specific feature and say, go dig this.
Rhett
Yep. So in the last couple of minutes we have, and I wanna drive us home and you’ve been a great guest, provided lots of valuable information. I’ll let you pick. Where do you see, where do we need to head as an industry on hard spots? Would you give me your top, maybe two, three at most, where do you think we need to focus our efforts to improve or address hard spots?
Chris
Your opinion.
Jing
Yeah. So currently I’m leading two projects with the PRCI Pipeline Research Council International. So, our focus, we have two focuses. One is to find why certain hard spots crack. That’s the susceptibility of hard spots cracking. It’s different from hard spots susceptibility. As we mentioned, you have hardspots. So what?
Chris
It’s still beautiful.
Jing
Our generation, our generation of grandfather, they have that and we got to live with it. Yeah, right. So what but we’re gonna have to prevent hard spots from cracking. And so that’s the focus number one And focus number two is the state of our art tool. I mean, I mean the the dual MFO tool It is still in an advancing stage So we got to help improve that tool regarding its POI, POD location accuracy sizing.
Rhett
But these have been out for a while I mean, they’ve been running art spot inspection since, what, early 2000s?
Chris
Yeah.
Rhett
And so you’re saying that there is an ongoing project or starting project to really define and improve the state of the art for hard spot technology.
Jing
Yeah, that’s actually one of the suggestions from the NTSB report to FIMSA that—
Chris
Which, right. – But it kind of makes sense, right? Because again, you’ll have indications, but when you start honing in on what an MFL does, right, It’s this the signal characteristics will change the reason why we use high high frequent high MAG levels is because you want to saturate the pipe so that it focuses on flux leakage However, when you’re looking at material changes, you’re looking at lower residual, because which are residuals are or calibrated low fields is because you’re trying to hone in on the microstructure influence on magnetic fields the permeability the magnetic permeability and And now it’s a little bit vaguer you’re not just looking for amplitudes you’re looking at system response to a material and now what if it’s not as hard in this plate or the size is smaller so it’s actually kind of complex right complex doesn’t mean bad it just means we need to better understand it which makes sense.
Jing
We have the possibility of the improvement.
Rhett
Yeah so those two efforts interesting because both of those are PRCI efforts. What information would you recommend maybe somebody who’s not a PRCI member which can be challenging to get involved in that if you’re not in PRCI member? What information is out there made for people who aren’t PRCI members?
Jing
Yeah, there are two publications I can recommend for found read. One is Kiefner’s book regarding North America’s history –
Rhett
That’s the red book. The red ASME book. If you don’t have the red ASME book as either an operator or a consultant, you to have that book.
Jing
Yeah, it’s a good book to start with. And regarding ILI Tool, I will recommend a paper published from last year’s IPC. It’s called “Know Your Enemy. Improvements in managing the…” Let me take a look at my notes. “Managing the Thread of a Hot Spot” by Rosen.
Rhett
That was, yeah, by Con Tran and Simon Slater. It was a good paper.
Jing
And also, we are looking at updating the effort Inga started back in 2005. It’s the integrity characteristics of vintage pipeline. As we said, hard spot is a vintage problem.
Rhett
Wow, all right, so some good information out there. So, Jing, I wanna say thanks for joining us on the show today. Do you have any parting thoughts you’d like to leave with the audience?
Jing
The last analogy, I’m really good at it.
Chris
Oh! (laughs)
Rhett
The last analogy, here we go!
Chris
I think that’s – That’s it. I think– –
Rhett
The title is Analogies, Analogies with Jig?
Chris
Yeah, it’s the last Analogy with Jig. (laughing)
Jing
All right, a lot of playing puzzles. I have loads of puzzles at home. So for hard spot, I would say it’s a very baby -ish puzzle. We don’t need to go, you know, 5 ,000 pieces or 1,000 pieces. It’s only—
Chris
They’re two by two squares.
Jing
Yeah, 10 or 20 pieces. So take a look at it from a holistic approach. You need to collect all the puzzle pieces together to have a picture. Don’t just narrow to just one particular piece and says, you know what, let me focus on that 327 Brino. Guarantee you that’s not working because in order to remember that Venn diagram, you need to have a sustainability, atomic hydrogen and also environment contribution.
Chris
It’s such a good analogy too, right? Because again, by the two inch by two inch with the puzzle pieces, it’s a bigger piece. While you could try to find the little crack with an ILI in a hard spot, those are little pieces. The guidance is find the big pieces, put them together. God, that’s so good.
Jing
I’ve got the idea of my my side job. I’m gonna print puzzle pieces with you have that mohawk here with the mullet
Rhett
We got you we got a gift for our guest host it’s not a puzzle it’s not but you will find it useful this time we’re gonna close out the episode
Chris
As an as a first -time guest and an international guest we wanted to give you something what the way I would say something very H -town, and we have the Houston livestock show rodeo that’s ongoing so we wanted to give you a small small tokens you could take it back and remember us. I know Calgary has the stampede, but it’s still sorry it’s still second best to Houston Lifestyle.
Jing
Okay, I hope I’m not getting the $1 ,000 piece of spot remover.
Chris
So we give you the small gift if you don’t mind. Go on ahead and open it up.
Jing
Does the color match with my dress today?
Rhett
Yeah! This is so good.
Jing
Thank you Chris. Thanks Rhett. I like it.
Rhett
Oh well you got a chance to wear it tonight. So I want to thank Jing for coming join us on the show. We hope you enjoyed today’s edition of Pipeline Things and we look forward. Upcoming, this is the end of our season one arc. Our next arc you can look forward to will be covering ILI technology with all of our vendors at PPIM I think you’re gonna love it. Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you again.
