Materials and Corrosion Engineering

Materials employed for the onshore, offshore and subsea environment must be carefully designed and selected with respect to their inherent properties and characteristics so that optimum performance is obtained, whether in terms of anti-corrosion properties, weldability, durability, toughness and so on. It is therefore of fundamental importance that all materials are designed and selected for not only optimum performance but also over the durations of the component life-cycle.

Typically, the predominance of carbon steels in use within the offshore and subsea environment are susceptible to corrosion which is an insidious form of attack – and may in some cases cause catastrophic failure of operational oil and gas assets leading to a significant impact on human life, environmental upsets, substantive financial losses, as well as Operator reputation within the oil and gas and global community. 

A wide range of corrosion types and mechanisms have been well examined and highlighted to date within the industry such as stress corrosion cracking, hydrogen induced cracking, microbial influenced corrosion, pitting corrosion, etc., within operational oil and gas assets such as pipelines, wellheads, structures, completion systems, piping, process vessels etc.

Understanding the interaction and relationship of corrosion mechanisms and types with respect to materials selection and design, fabrication, installation and operations can be considered a key and effective methodology by which the control, prevention and mitigation of corrosion can be best addressed.

It is widely recognised within the oil and gas industry that effective and robust management of corrosion makes a positive contribution towards the instigation and maintenance of asset integrity which achieves some of the following benefits:

• Increased uptime and asset availability
• Reduction / improvement in inspection maintenance and repair time and costs
• Minimising loss of containment – improving safety and environmental hazard
• Compliance with statutory, regulatory and corporate HSE requirements