Effects of ice gouging on buried pipelines

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Arctic and northern cold regions are one of the few remaining frontiers that may hold significant hydrocarbon reserves to meet global demand for energy and petrochemical industries. Pipelines remain a cost effective and reliable transport mode of oil and gas products, from field development areas to market, over extended distances. For offshore pipelines in ice environments, key engineering challenges relate to uncertainty on the interaction of an ice feature with the seabed, known as an ice gouge event, and the corresponding load effects on buried pipeline systems. Technical and logistical challenges exist to progress developments safely with no sustained environmental impact while addressing the need to engineer practical solutions with predictable outcomes bounded by technological, economic and logistical constraints. This collaborative research program brings together academia and industry in an effort to reduce this technical uncertainty and risk. This research program will address questions on how properties of the ice keel and seabed soil influence ice gouge events and affect the mechanical response of buried infrastructure such as pipelines. The use of laboratory testing, full-scale physical modelling and development of advanced computational procedures will provide the technology framework to address these questions. The primary objective is to advance calibrated, leading edge simulation tools that can assess the mechanical integrity of buried pipelines in ice gouge environments over a range of practical engineering design parameters. The integration of leading and proven technologies will address current industry challenges and unlock constraints that hinder development of new frontier areas with practical, cost-effective and safe engineering solutions. The research outcomes will provide a basis to promote safe, reliable and cost effective pipeline transportation systems with potential economic benefits to Canada by providing a technical basis to access strategic energy supplies.