In the Field
Final Phase of SIPPS complete

During the month of January, Alyeska scheduled a mini-shutdown of the pipeline to complete the final phase of transition to Alyeska’s new Safety Integrity Pressure Protection System (SIPPS). These transitions are significant steps for completion of the Strategic Reconfiguration (SR) project which will upgrade and standardize operating equipment at the reconfigured pump stations in an effort to improve operating efficiency.

The focus of this shutdown was to complete the mainline protection portion of SIPPS cutover for control of TAPS and to test communications between Pump Stations (PS) 4, 5 and 9 and the Operations Control Center (OCC).

The successful completion of the cutover enables live SIPPS control of all Remote Gate Valves (RGVs) on TAPS. Relief valves and Battery Limit (BL) valves at PS 5 and BL valves at PS 9 were also transitioned during the shutdown. At PS 9, SIPPS monitoring and control of the manifold building safety systems was also placed in service.

“I want to publicly express my appreciation for the contributions of our employees to get us to this critical stage of the Strategic Reconfiguration Project,” said Mike Joynor, Vice President, Oil Movements.

The new SIPPS plays an important role as it operates the RGVs and controls safety functions at the pump stations and along the pipeline, providing communications and controls between the valves and the OCC. Placing SIPPS in service also allows for the deactivation of the legacy Systronics RGV controls system.

In recent years, Systronics failures caused several unplanned pipeline shutdowns. The safety design and redundancy of SIPPS should result in improved system reliability.