A Calgary engineering firm says they’ve come up with a new system that could smooth the political path for pipelines by greatly reducing the risk of leaks.
Hifi Engineering says its HDS technology can spot the exact location of a leak within seconds of it happening.
In fact, the company’s system that fires signals down fibre optic cables built alongside pipelines is like a supersensitive microphone and pressure sensor that could possible even detect a leak before it occurs.
“We detected an earthquake from Helena, Montana coming north to some of our small deployments. We also detected a security intrusion from an excavator that was digging in the wrong spot. If left unattended, those kinds of events could lead to a leak,” said Steve Koles with Hifi Engineering.
That data is sent to control rooms where workers can act quickly to shut down the pipeline before a leak spreads.
“It’s another piece of information into that control room where controllers can say, ‘yeah, you know what, I’ve got two indications that something up along the pipeline, I now have confidence what’s going on and can act with confidence, shutting down the pipeline’,” said Douglas Robertson with TransCanada Pipelines.
Pipeline leaks are expensive to clean and often cause public relations nightmares, so the government says that any technology developed to prevent them is a good idea.
“This will help in the conversations when we look at moving forward, whether it be with Kinder Morgan or Energy East, quite frankly,” said Alberta’s Minister of Economic Development Deron Bilous.
TransCanada is installing Hifi’s leak detection system in two stretches of the Keystone pipeline and Enbridge has it in the new Norlite pipeline in northern Alberta.
The system is 100 percent built in Canada and Hifi plans to ship it all around the world.
(With files from Kevin Green)
