When plants and pipelines are in operation, they are subjected to regular checks and maintenance to ensure high safety standards. Special attention is paid to the transmission route, which is inspected regularly with motor vehicles, helicopters and on foot to detect potentially dangerous situations (for example, caused by third parties working near the pipelines), or to discover potential gas leaks along roadways.
It is now standard practice to use advanced inspection technologies such as intelligent pigs to inspect the interior of wide-diameter pipelines. Without interrupting the flow of gas, intelligent pigs run along the inside of the pipelines, detecting and recording information on their characteristics and their condition, for example the presence of any defects.
To detect any gas leaks in the inspection of municipal gas networks, we normally use GPS-equipped vehicles suitably provided with the most modern detection equipment to sample and analyze continuously gas-air mixtures along the surface of the roadway along the upper generatrix of the buried pipeline.
During 2009, we inspected more than 1,600 km of the network with “intelligent pigs” and about 13,700 km of the network using helicopters. We also conducted geological surveys of about 1,200 km of the pipeline network in unstable areas and conducted two inspections of the five undersea lines crossing the Strait of Messina.
With regard to the municipal network, we inspected more than 18,600 km of pipeline, posting qualitative standards in excess of those required by the Italian Electricity and Gas Authority.
