Norse Pipeline Reduces Monitoring Expenses by $100,000 per Year

Norse Pipeline is a 320-mile system of high-pressured steel pipeline spanning 2.1 million acres in western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania, 11,000 wells. With the responsibility of delivering local gas into interstate pipelines and for local distribution, their goal is to provide local producers with innovative, reliable, flexible and quality services.

Challenges

Norse Pipeline needed a wireless solution to provide real-time information to remotely monitor and manage its pipeline meters to replace the process of having field technicians to manually check pressure, load, temperature and consumption data by visiting remote terminals and reporting their findings using written charts. Often it would take more than a month to retrieve and analyze data obtained by a field technician.

To reduce expenses and improve operations, Norse needed a more intelligent solution in the field to enable the non-intelligent legacy machines and improve the consistency and accuracy of metering data retrieval.

Solution

Norse Pipeline turned to Sierra Wireless and the AirLink Raven rugged, intelligent gateway, featuring ALEOS™ embedded intelligence. Norse Pipeline was able to deploy a reliable, always-on, always-there solution and realized an immediate and significant improvement in operational efficiency and time-savings.

“The 24/7 information that we can access with our wireless system is invaluable,” said Larry Swanson, operations manager at Norse Pipeline. “Not only can we easily monitor and manage our pipeline at all meter locations, we can also provide critical real-time data to our gas suppliers, which adds tremendous value for them.”

Today, Norse Pipeline is running fully operational metered locations using its progressive remote monitoring and management solution. The AirLink rugged, wireless Raven devices generate updated, flawless information every 15 minutes for Norse’s technicians, giving them more time to spend on necessary field maintenance.

The Sierra Wireless’ AirLink Raven intelligent gateways have provided Norse Pipeline with the following benefits:

Operational Improvements
• Flawless meter reads – Nearly 100% uptime
• Reduced monthly recurring costs by $8,750 (over $100,000 per year)
• Eliminated ‘lost gas’ – saving an estimated $36,000 per year
• Experienced dramatic ROI that is both real and verifiable