Borcoat™ polyethylene coating protects major crude oil pipeline in Turkey

Borcoat™ polyethylene (PE) pipe coating material from Borealis was selected to provide corrosion protection for the Turkish section of the 1760km Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, running from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, from where crude oil is shipped to markets worldwide.

Borealis worked with BOTAŞ, the Turkish pipeline operating company and its contractors Noksel, Umran and Mannesmann, to find a coating solution that provided the long-term performance demanded by the pipeline. The pipeline traverses remote and challenging terrain and is subject to the extremes of weather and climate conditions.

Designed to transport up to one million barrels of crude oil per day from a cluster of discoveries in the Caspian Sea, referred to collectively as the Azeri, Chirag, Gunashli field, the 1074km of the 42 inch and 34 inch steel pipes that cross Turkey are protected from corrosion by Borcoat HE3450 bimodal PE, together with Borcoat ME0420 grafted PE adhesive and epoxy primer, which provide a high-performance three-layer system. The Borcoat system helps customers like BOTAŞ achieve a lower overall lifetime project cost by allowing high-speed laying operations, reducing pipeline damage and the need for maintenance, while giving high coating output and optimised coating thickness.

“As a pipe coating material, PE has long been recognised as one of the best technical and economical solutions for protecting steel pipes from long-term corrosion,” says Barry Turner, Application Marketing Manager, Borealis Pipe. “Our Borcoat PE is made with our Borstar® process technology, which provides a plastic with especially good melt strength and extrudability. Borstar enhances mechanical and heat deformation properties and environmental stress crack resistance, and so optimises the protection of the very large pipeline.”

Borcoat HE3450 bimodal plastic contains consistently dispersed fine particles of carbon black that gives excellent weathering and UV resistance. Together with Borcoat ME0420 or Borcoat M0433 and a compatible powder epoxy the coating is particularly suitable where a pipeline must cope with severe laying conditions and either low or high ambient temperatures.

Borealis has supplied 10,000 metric tonnes of Borcoat HE3450 and Borcoat ME0420 for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which is due to become fully operational by early 2005.