Pitting corrosion is an ubiquitous phenomenon in the oil and gas industry and is the leading cause of
internal failures in hydrocarbon production and processing equipment. While significant effort has been
made to test the effectiveness of corrosion inhibitors, these tests are best at differentiating reductions in
general corrosion rates – not pitting rates. In this paper, laser surface profilometry is presented as a
robust, quantitative and systematic method to assess the efficacy of chemical treatments to prevent both
general and localized pitting corrosion. The results using these methods are presented using various
corrosion inhibitors in both sour and sweet hydrocarbon environments.