A LEAKAGE IN THE PIPELINES FOR TRANSFERRING OIL IN MAJNOON FIELD 

Report of: Ali Abdulraheem                                                                                                                                                                                           HOME

Cameraman: Ala'a Na'aeem  

The net of the pipelines for transferring oil is stretching for a very long distances among the oil fields, it is a complex net. For continuance of the production, there must be an availability of pipes of a high quality and specifications. There is no doubt every thing have a specific period of time, and then its quality or effect expires. This is what happened in a one pipeline for transferring oil in Majnoon oil field where oil leaked from two pipes transferring oil from the main station to Al-Zubair reservoirs. The leak of a quantity of oil near by Shatt Al-Arab leads to environmental disasters especially that one of the pipes passes through the farms.

For fuller details on this subject Oil Magazine met the Manager of Environment Department in South Oil Company the Senior Chief Engineer Mr. Jaafer Ahoal Ferhan where he told us saying " I have received a phone call on Saturday 24/12/2011  at 3:00 P.M from the Director of the Common Management  Mr. Mahdi Bada'a Hussain . Soon I moved to the leak site and called our staff in the related departments (Maintenance Department, Department of Engineering Efforts and the section of Pollution Control) and with all the available equipments from both AL-MUFTIA site and AL-KOUR site where we found two pollution areas . The first one near Shatt Al-Arab about 100 M from the river which is the most dangerous , the leakage was very large where we moved huge amounts of oil reaches up to 30 tanker , but the leaked oil did not reach the river because we intervened immediately to resolve the situation . The work continued for about five days. This is through my field follow-up and the efforts of the employees from the Department of Safety And Fire.

Mr. ja'afer added "through the ongoing support and backing from the Director General and the First Assistant of the Director General, we went the next day morning to the second leakage site where it away 50 meters from the first one towards the station. This pipe is 32 inches. We moved our equipments from special pumps which are used in such cases, scrapers, vacuum equipments and rubber tanks where the equipments soak the oil mixed with water after filtering it from the water , return it to a crude oil and the pumps pumping it to the rubber tanks where the rubber tank capacity reaches from 30 to 40 thousand liters , it means every rubber tank has the same size of a tanker . Then the oil is drawing from the rubber tanks to the tankers, after that the equipments return the oil to the stations. The work continued up for four days during which our staff of engineers, technicians, temporary workers had made tremendous efforts.

Mr. ja'afar attributed that the leakage is caused by the oldness of the pipes which leads to its corrosion. Besides the increase in production which is generating a pressure on the pipes. Mr. Ja'afer called the specialists, such as Projects Management Department and the Engineering Tests Department to study and calculate  the ages of such pipes and replacing them in order to avoid the occurrence of such cases .