Piping and pipeline in oil and gas industry

There are many types of equipment available in the oil and gas industry. Which one I should learn first? For a fresh graduated mechanical engineer, I suggest you learn about piping and pipeline. Piping is similar equipment with the pipeline. The design of piping is similar to pipeline design. The piping inspection method is similar to pipeline inspection. Piping location is inside of a plant. Pipeline location is outside the plant. If you expert in piping, you will be an expert in the pipeline.

Compare to other equipment like a pressure vessel or tank, piping/pipeline is the most frequent equipment. There are a lot of jobs available in piping and pipeline area. You can choose many jobs whether in the engineering phase, construction phase or in the maintenance phase.

If you choose to focus on the engineering phase, then you need to learn about ASME B31.3, ASME B31.4, ASME B31.8, and other piping/pipeline code. You also need to learn about fitting and piping/pipeline material specification. It will be an advantage for you if you understand piping stress analysis software like Caesar or Pipephase. You need to be an expert in isometric drawing and drawing software like AutoCAD.  You also need to build a network and a good relationship with a process engineering team. The deliverable of the piping/pipeline engineering phase is a set of drawing and a set of piping/pipeline material list.

If you focus on the maintenance phase, you need to learn about API 570 for piping inspection strategy, API 580 – risk-based inspection, corrosion control and monitoring, inspection method, IDMS software, RBI software, and CMMS software. At least, you need to understand about Ultrasonic inspection, Long range ultrasonic inspection and an advance inspection named ILI. Most likely you will hear about asset integrity procedure, Asset integrity program and asset integrity software.