To ensure safety and reliability, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) included section 192.493, In-Line Inspection (ILI) of pipelines, in the Federal Pipeline Safety Regulations and it was effective on July 1, 2020. This means that when conducting in-line inspection of gas pipelines, each operator must comply with the requirements and recommendations of three documents incorporated by reference in §192.7. One of these documents is API Std 1163. Addressing in detail each of the aspects of an ILI inspection, with checks and balances, can be an overwhelming and difficult task. This paper provides an easy-to-implement methodology to verify the proper execution of an ILI survey, from the selection of the ILI to the actual validation of the results. It includes a section to validate ILI results for each examined anomaly and, in this way, generate quantitative comparisons to determine if critical anomalies have been classified and characterized using an appropriate level of conservatism. The paper discusses a simple method to determine the acceptance of the survey and its inspection data.
Key words: 49 CFR 192.493, In-Line Inspection (ILI) of pipelines, Verification, Validation, Federal Safety Regulation, ANSI/ASNT ILI-PQ-2017, In-Line Inspection Personnel Qualification and Certification, API Std 1163, In-line Inspection Systems Qualification Standard, NACE SP0102-2017, Inline Inspection of Pipelines