On 10th October 2024 the branch held a joint meeting with the London Materials Society (LMS), when Ali Morshed presented, “Why Effective MIC Control is Still a Major Challenge in the Industry.”
Ali has a PhD in corrosion engineering from University College London and is the author of five corrosion management books, and one book on MIC, with NACE/AMPP. He is a corrosion engineer with more than 21 years of experience, starting his career in the Oil and Gas industry in 2002, and gradually expanded his work to many other industries.
Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) remains as a major integrity threat and cause of failure for many upstream, mid-stream, and downstream, oil and gas assets, despite the continuous technological advances in the areas of oilfield microbiology, metallurgy, and chemicals.
MIC can be defined as corrosion influenced by the presence, or activity, of microorganisms. Such microorganisms can cause corrosion problems for various oil and gas assets either directly or indirectly. The corrosion damage inflicted by them is considered direct when they create, or further increase, the environment’s corrosivity (e.g., by acid production through their metabolism). The damage is considered indirect when they attack, deteriorate, or weaken, a corrosion control measure already in place, thus further promoting corrosion. Such affected corrosion control measures include surface coatings and some corrosion control chemicals such as certain types of oxygen scavengers.
Ali explained that the locations or systems most susceptible to bacterial contamination and MIC include, but are not limited to, sea water injection, fire water, cooling water, sand-wash water (where treated sea water is used to wash the sand accumulated in various pressure vessels), water displacement systems (where treated sea water is used to empty a product storage tank), and wet product transfer pipelines and product storage tanks.
He highlighted an important caveat regarding MIC – prevention is always better than cure, because microbial control once lost, may take years to restore, if at all! Extensive field experience from both the UK’s North Sea sector and the Persian Gulf r egion indicated that the main root cause of the encountered MIC leaks, failures, and issues, has been either the total lack, of or inadequate, knowledge and expertise in relation to bacterial and MIC basics and fundamentals, among the relevant personnel.
More precisely, MIC incompetency has been the main culprit behind the failures. In general, the observed MIC incompetency can be divided into the following subject areas:
- Bacterial nourishment and growth conditions
- Bacterial and MIC monitoring
- Bacterial and MIC assessment and control
The last two items, when combined comprise the overall bacterial and MIC mitigation process, as was mentioned earlier.Simultaneously, it has also been observed that Oil and Gas assets which successfully managed and controlled the MIC integrity threat were those where the relevant personnel possessed adequate MIC competency, mainly due to the MIC training they had received.
Ali finished by saying that while MIC incompetency remains the main root cause of bacterial and MIC problems, timely, practical, and adequate MIC training is regarded as the main solution, and way forward for tackling the existing MIC issues for the Oil and Gas assets concerned.
Photo. The chair for the Evening Introducing the Speaker and the LMS Vice Chair, Melissa Tiskaya.
Photo. Ali Morshed Presenting on MIC.
Photo (Right): After an Interesting Q&A Session, Ali was Presented with an ICorr Pen in Appreciation of His Talk, by the Chair for the Evening, ICorr Committee Member, Brian Goldie.
The London Branch also kindly hosted the 2024 Young Engineers (Case Study) Programme reported separately above on page 10.
