Not Your Standard Pizza: Inspecting Pipelines with Intero

Rhett Dotson: All right, welcome to Pipeline Things. We are continuing our PPIM edition with our technology vendors here in 2024. Super excited. I am your guest, I mean, I'm your host Rhett Dotson. My co-host, I'm all crazy today, Christopher De Leon, and our guest Mr. Rienk De Vries. Did I get that right? Rienk De Vries: You got it right. Yes. Rhett Dotson: All right, and in all fairness, you weren't the originally scheduled guest. This was like an audible right before. Rienk De Vries: Stand in. Rhett Dotson: So yeah, stand in. Now I have to know how. Christopher De Leon: But it’s an upgrade. It is an upgrade. Rhett Dotson: Is it? I know we got an upgrade in height. We got an upgrade in height for sure. Potentially, could we argue an upgrade in culture? Christopher De Leon: Just everything for sure. Rhett Dotson: For sure an upgrade in culture. Christopher De Leon: We will not say who was the original guest. Let’s just say we’ve had a couple of other Europeans on the show today and that’s what he’s inferring. Rhett Dotson: I can’t remember, how did the last time that those two countries faced each other in the World Cup, how did that go? Christopher De Leon: No, no, but I would say Rienk De Vries: I know the women, shocker, they they. But anyway, we’re here for something else, right Rhett Dotson: Well, we want to thank you for joining us. Especially for joining us, you know, so on the fly and being willing to subject yourself to what’s going to come over the next 30 minutes or so. Christopher De Leon. Yes, thank you very much. Rhett Dotson: Or so. Give or take, right? But for our audience out there, Rick comes from Intero. And so if you don’t mind, I’d like to just give you the floor a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are? How did you find yourself at the helm of Intero? Intero and in pipelines? We always want to hear about people’s pipeline stories. Because I doubt you grew up as a child and said, “I want to work in pipelines.” Christopher De Leon: Yeah, I heard about pigs, this is what I want to do. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. Good question. So, yes, now let me introduce myself. So I’m Rienk De Vries, as you already mentioned, and pronounced correctly. And I’m with Intero as CEO since 2017. Okay, so as you may know, Intero previously was named AHAG. It was a family-owned business that transferred in ownership to private equity since the end of 2017 and then we started the journey to rebrand the company. What we did to Intero. And also having capital available from our new shareholders to invest in technology development but also adding other companies through M&A, which is what we did over the last few years. A little but about my background. So, I’ve been in inspection for my entire career. I started after I graduated working for A-Plus in the Netherlands. Christopher De Leon: Yeah, perfect. Rienk De Vries: It was the end of the 90s. Yeah, so at that time it was a company with some subsidiaries abroad. But I think it was early 2000s or late 90s when they changed ownership as well to private equity and similar type of journey that we are in currently, acquiring companies, growing, becoming part of A-Plus. At that time, it was RTD, maybe you know that. And I’ve been in several positions over the course of 18 years working for the company, managing operations, mostly on the advanced inspection and technology side, also pipelines. Rhett Dotson: For A-Plus? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, RTD at the time. Rhett Dotson: Got you. Rienk De Vries: Until, I’ve been technical director in the last five years for A-Plus, developing ILI technologies, but also other technologies like weld inspection, which was called Rotoscan at the time. So yes, I’ve been involved in pipelines for many years. And after A-Plus changed to A-Hack, and later on became Intero. Rhett Dotson: Fantastic! So, tell us a little but about who is Intero, right? So, what are you, what’s your guy's niche, where do you all fit? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, so as Intero we have several fields where we work and we call them service lines. So, the most significant one is indeed pipeline inspection. ILI. But in this whole arena of pipeline inspection, we focus on a niche which is the difficult to inspect. We sometimes say it’s the bigger the challenge, the more difficult it is, the more we like it. And why? Because we have our own technology development so we can work on tailor-made solutions. We’re constantly expanding our envelope of solutions, inspecting pipelines that were previously unexpected. Rhett Dotson: You’re right, yeah. Rienk De Vries: So we operate several pipelines in the ILI inspection solutions. We have U3 for liquid lines, so we have small diameters, very flexible tools to cope with difficult geometries, diameter changes, single-side access. Rhett Dotson: So, I’m sorry, so those, the ultrasonic tools, are those free-swimming? Rienk De Vries: Those are free-swimming, yeah. But we don’t only deliver the inspection, we do the whole thing, we call it turnkey. So if it’s unpickable, you know you can provide a perfect technology solution. But you can tell the customer, hey this is the beautiful pipeline tool that I have. Tell me where to launch it, and then there is no launching it. Christopher De Leon: The execution of the project a lot of the time is the solution, like I heard you say single access point right, so you’re introducing and having to extract and that has an art to it. Rienk De Vries: So it’s not only the pipeline inspection tool that we deliver as a solution, but also the whole, the whole bringing the pumps to site, installing the launchers’ receivers. Of such a project takes five, six days for a pipelines, the inspection is in general maybe only a few hours, maybe, and all the rest is getting the tool in the pipeline, getting it from A to B. Getting it out and giving it back to commissioning again, and getting back to operations. Christopher De Leon: Yeah, it kind of brings a highlight back to you know, often we say the early days of in-line inspection was a very simple goals: can you get the tool in and safely out? And then you ask that I get data. You guys are continuing to tackle that challenge even today, now, right? Rienk De Vries: No, exactly. You know before the, what we call the commodity ILI, conventional ILI, everything is there and engineered and designed, right? Launchers, receivers, so you go to where the tool is, you launch it and you pick it up. But the applications that we are specialized in don’t have that. So we have to engineer a solution to make sure that we get access and have a safe and good quality operation. And that differentiates us from other ILI vendors too. And I sometimes compare it with, it’s a different business model, right? You can compare it with a pizza restaurant or an a la carte. You know the commodity business is more pizza. You know, it’s the one after the other, high-quality repetitive business. What we do is more a la carte. You know every inspection situation requires maybe a different solution. Christopher De Leon: Yeah, that hits so close to home to me. You have no idea Mr. Rienk. Because I don’t like Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut just shows up and it’s a pepperoni pizza and I’m tired of it. And we have a pizza restaurant here called On Demand and so it’s made on demand, and that’s what this kind of makes me think of right. You got to engage and deliver something very specific to what you’re needing. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, you know, they both exist, right. Christopher De Leon: Yeah, of course. Rienk De Vries: But if you mix them, that’s why we also want to stick to difficult and spectral pipelines. That’s also where we want to be known for, as the specialist for the difficult pipelines. That’s why I said we like it the more difficult it is. Rhett Dotson: And I interrupted you because you were talking about the ultrasonic. So there’s the ultrasonic portion and there’s another part of it, the piece that I was familiar with you guys about, which, go ahead. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, so a few years ago in our growth trajectory, we merged with Pipetel. Pipetel is the business that has also solutions for difficult to inspect, but not for liquid lines, but for gas lines. Yeah, so it was a perfect marriage with the business model that we already had. But I just explained with another business having the same business model, having specialized solutions for difficult to inspect, but then for the gas utility market. Rhett Dotson: Right, so for our listeners out there, the Pipetel technology or that tool, that’s not, I’ve said it if you look at PPIM last year, there’s a thousand rows now, it’s huge, there’s a ton of MFL providers. But that tool does not look like your conventional MFL tool. No, and it is MFL that’s on board. It’s got a few other things on board too. So can you tell us a little bit about what is the Pipetel technology? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, I think the MFL piece is maybe the only thing which is comparable to what you see in all the MFLs. Rhett Dotson: That’s where the comparison stops after that. Rienk De Vries: That’s where it stops. All the rest is different. It’s a robot, so it goes in the pipeline. It’s remote-controlled and operated wireless, so it’s not with a tether. We can go in live pipelines. It can crawl in any direction. In can go with the flow, it can go against the flow because it has its own traction units. So it’s very flexible for difficult-to-inspect pipelines. So in general what we do is the high critical pipelines in high consequence areas, in urban populated areas, that’s really the main application areas where we deploy them. Christopher De Leon: So what’s neat about that statement, right, is it’s what you say high consequence areas, and I remember Pipetel, you know, pre-Intero, and if I’m not mistaken, its birth has a lot to do with a significant incident that we had in the United States. And so as a result of a failure, Congress kind of mandated PHMSA and the industry to develop improved technologies to inspect more pipelines, and some money was put together And if not, you know, work between NYSEARCH, then Pipetel is where kind of some of the birth of this technology came from right? Rienk De Vries: No exactly. So the, I think the first initiative to develop this tool goes back maybe 20 years again, and indeed industry through NYSEARCH put the money together to develop a solution for difficult-to-inspect pipelines which, because there wasn’t any solution for these particular pipe segments. So technology evolves through years to what we have right now. We have a full robot fleet that’s covering 6 to 36-inch in size, the majority of the pipes that are out there to be inspected with these robots. With conventional MFL, the development that we recently launched is also crack detection on long seams, additional crack detection modules that will be part of the existing robot, so only another sensor has on the same robot, so we’re still expanding the capabilities of these robots. Rhett Dotson: You don’t have a 36-inch robot here, do you? Rienk De Vries: No, no. Rhett Dotson: I want to see the 360inch robot, that’s got, I mean a 36-inch free swimming tool is impressive, but the 36-inch robotic tool that’s, it’s Rienk De Vries: It is. It’s quite a tool, yeah. Christopher De Leon: What I think is unique about you guys as well right is it’s, you know, NYSEARCH at that time, I mean obviously it’s origins right is it was operator-funded if I’m not mistaken, which kind of gives you guys a unique posture because as you’re working with this stuff, you’re able to engage operators, get pilot projects, get feedback. I mean, you are directly in tune with what the market wanted for your specific application. Rienk De Vries: No, exactly. And we still are because there are still so many opportunities and additional value that we can add. So we are still working closely together with great operators to improve and add features to the tool. Rhett Dotson: Fantastic. Are there any other divisions in Intero? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, good question. So yeah, we’re starting of and saying that we have three service lines. So this is the inspection one, which we just covered. Second one is what we call environmental services. It’s a company that we acquired in 2019 doing emission management, emission monitoring. We’re predominantly working in Europe and the Middle East. So we have not expanded to North America yet. Maybe we’re going to do it in the future, but for now we focus on Europe. Also because in Europe there’s a lot of new regulation in the making. It will be announced probably this year. It will make emission-monitoring and control, methane. Rhett Dotson: So methane emissions, methane leaks. Rienk De Vries: Yes, so we do that with monitors, quantifying emissions and we have software to present it to our customers so that they can reduce their emissions and also prove to the authorities that they are compliant. Rhett Dotson: All right excellent, well I tell you what, we’re actually going to take a real quick break, and for our audience, when we get back, we’re gonna get into what does it look like when you run Intero’s technology and some of the really cool, like you already heard, that it’s wirelessly controlled, but there’s more than that. Stay tuned and we’ll be right back. Break Hosts: Hello everyone! It’s BJ Lowe from Clarion and we’re very happy to be sponsoring this season of Pipeline Things to showcase impressive technologies being exhibited here at PPIM. I’m Ben Stroman and I’m impressed with the turnout at the 36th PPIM Conference event in 2024 with 159 companies exhibiting over 3,000 attendees and over 90 papers being presented. We’ve had a great year with a huge turnout in terms of high-quality technical paper submissions. Attendees this year will have the opportunity to hear from industry stakeholders and their advancements in several field including ILI analysis, geohazards, material identification and verification, emerging issues, repair, hydrogen, integrity management, NDT, and more. If you couldn’t make it in person to the PPIM Conference in February, you can always find helpful resources and tools offered by Clarion year-round. We have several courses taught by subject matter experts that can be found on our website. We’re excited for PPIM this year and we hope to see everyone next year as well, but be sure to stay up to date with Clarion and its offerings by joining our mailing list on our website. Thanks. Rhett Dotson: All right everyone, thanks for coming back from the break where we are knee deep with Intero talking about their service lines and about to get into their robotic technologies. So I’d like to hear, if someone comes to you, and I’d really like to hone in on the robotics. And if someone in our audience wants to run your technology on a difficult to inspect pipelines, what does that look like? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, that’s a good question. Robotics is always making people excited, right? So I’m happy to share some details on that. But before I go there, I mentioned that we are operating three services lines, we’ve covered two now. So just quickly on the last one, which is industrial services. Industrial services actually was the start of the company when we were AHAC industrial services. That was the only thing that we’re doing. After a few years, they picked up inspections and that happened to outgrow the industrial services piece. But we still do that. So in Europe, and we also keep that in Europe, we do what we call Industrial Services, which is predominantly a nitrogen purging. Purging from chemical cleaning. But it’s an important piece because it is in the DNA of our company. And that’s also why we can do the turnkey solution, because our people are used to running nitrogen to do cleaning of the pipelines, to do mechanical work, installing lounges, receivers, pool pieces. So that makes us, Christopher De Leon: There’s a safety component there. I mean, for example, back here in the US regulations, there’s a lot of buzz around pigging safety, right, making sure you’re doing it properly and that people are not putting in any extra risks if they’re not needed. And so those turnkey operations can be pretty dangerous. So, if you’re right, that’s important to be part of your DNA. Rienk De Vries: It’s an important combination for our company, but the main focus on what we’re doing is the inspection service line and the environmental service line and industrial services is only what you see in as a separate service in Europe, but you see elements of that in our inspection service line as well. Rhett Dotson: Makes sense. Rienk De Vries: All right, then the robotics piece. Rhett Dotson: Yes, so I’ve got a 36-inch pipeline. Let’s just say it’s half a kilometer and you guys are gonna inspect it. What does that look like? Rienk De Vries: Yeah. So what I already mentioned earlier, so we can inspect this pipeline while the pipeline remains in operation. Rhett Dotson: That’s so huge. Without a launcher and without a receiver? Rienk De Vries: So yeah, if there’s no launcher, there is a hot app required to be able to install a launcher. So that’s not what we do, but there’s another contractor installing the hot app. Then we install, we bring our launcher. And with safe launch operation, we launch the robot in the pipelines. Which is what I said, it’s wirelessly operated. So we have a robot pilot, an operator. Rhett Dotson: Does he have like a joystick or is it an Xbox remote? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, it’s not directly in a joystick, but you know, maybe to visualize it for yourself, you know, call it a joystick. Christopher De Leon: Like an Atari joystick with a red button on top. Rhett Dotson: Yeah, that’s what I was wondering. Like hit the turbo button! Hit the turbo button! Rienk De Vries: Maybe you game too much right? But you know, you can compare it a lot, but it’s a sensitive operation, right? So you need to maneuver, you can send the robot in any direction. So if you go into the pipeline, you can decide if you go left or if you go right. You can go through Ferris T-bands, 1D or even smaller. You can go in another T-piece. Again, you can maneuver in any direction as you want, so you don’t necessarily have to flow in line, but you need to have it on regular MFL inspection. You can even travel against the flow. It’s wireless, so it doesn’t have a tether, so it’s remotely operated, and you collect the data on your way. We actually collect three data sets with this robot. So we have your MFL data, there’s a camera on it, so you can see where you go, and there’s a laser on it as well. So for deformation on the nose of the tool, there is laser technology installed. So you have three data sets that you can use also on your data analysis, providing you more information. Rhett Dotson: And you alluded to the, you’re adding crack onto it as well? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, so the crack for long seams is what we have added. So that’s a separate inspection. So we take out MFL conventional and then we bring in the long seam sensor. Rhett Dotson: That's pretty cool. Rienk De Vries: Because we can allocate the long seam location ang then we can inspect the long seam for cracks. Christopher De Leon” Is it modular? So you extract it and you just take off the MFL laser component, add it and then the robot just goes right back in? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, so the laser is separate. It’s in the nose and the MFL is a separate module. So you can change the MFL-A module for an MFL-C correct detection module. Rhett Dotson: You said that it runs wireless, no tether, right? That sounds really cool. My question though is if I’m an operator that might actually sound terrifying. What happens if you lose connection with your wireless, like my phone loses connection. Or how do you prevent battery related issues, like oh, we got all the way does the line and then batteries gone kapoot, I’m sorry, we’re gonna have to go on. I mean, you must have some protections against it. Rienk De Vries: No, absolutely. And you know, those questions have been asked during the development as well over the last 15 years. So there’s a lot of redundancy in the tool. So, if you lose, you know on the battery side, there’s a lot of redundancy. And we also don’t drive until the batteries are completely empty right. So we always a safety factor there that we are sure that we can retrieve the tool. And on the most critical component, that redundancy in the tool so that you don’t lose connection. Christopher De Leon: So on that topic. You know Rienk, it makes me think about extraction. I mean, what if like the idea is it’s maybe it has power, but what happens if something you know something mechanically happens and you know, how would you retrieve it? You know, a lot of times, you feel the safety net of a tether because you can pull it back. What do you guys do if you need to get it out? You know, is there any safety mechanisms built in? Because it’s, you’ve got modules on this right, two, three, well do you get it out? Rienk De Vries: You know you’re talking about a situation where you completely run out of power or when you lose connection or in mechanical failure happens, but again, there is so much safety redundancy in the tool. In fact, that doesn’t happen. And you know, there’s always enough battery in it or spare capacity on the batteries that we can retrieve the tool. We always can drive back and get it out. Rhett Dotson: It’s like the Apollo mission to the moon. You had like plan A, B, C, and D going down. Christopher De Leon: Are the modules autonomous or are they all interconnected? Like does one module require the other or are they independently operating? Rienk De Vries: Independent, independent. So you don’t lose the entire tool. For example, so you will be able to retrieve it. Yeah, so there are multiple traction units on it that you can operate independently. Rhett Dotson: So I know one of the coolest things that I heard about and I wanna make sure it comes out, you guys offer some form of in-line charging? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, that’s a good one because, you know working so close with gas grid operators, you know, when you develop a solution for their need, for difficult-to-inspect pipelines, you know, the first solution that they got was something that can travel a mile, right? You know when you fix that problem, the next question is, hey can you go beyond a mile, right? So together with the industry, there has been a solution developed for that, what we call in-line charging. So from the outside, we can make a two-inch additional hot tap one mile further down the line, drive the tool to that position, and then charge it from the outside. So recharging the tool takes some time, and then we can continue for another mile. And that is actually something very innovative. Rhett Dotson: Yeah, yeah. Rienk De Vries: Something that we apply almost every day. There’s a lot of projects where we go beyond that mile, customer modifies this line with additional small hot apps on different locations. So we do multiple sections in one run. So it’s not that we only inspect pipeline with a few hundred meters or one-mile maximum, but by inline charging we extend the range of the rope. Rhett Dotson: That is so cool. So how long does it take to inspect a mile, generally speaking? Let’s say a 12-inch line. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, it takes a few hours. Rhett Dotson: And then it takes obviously some time to recharge it, but I mean, Rienk De Vries: You know you’re in an operating pipeline in operation, so you’re not disturbing the flow of the operations bypass on the tool so you can continue operation. So time is not really the important factor. Rhett Dotson: I was going to say, time is not really a factor. You’re inspecting something that, absent your solution is probably not inspectable, right? So time is almost kind of irrelevant. I think it’s just so cool that you guys can extend it, you know on the fly to go one, two, three miles if you want by just dropping in a two-inch hole. And every time you drop that two-inch hot top, you could take that coupon out and get material tests from it too right? Christopher De Leon: As long as it’s the right size, you’re absolutely right. We’ve talked about that before. But it also makes us think about just the value proposition that you guys offer because you’re able to do it on stream and in high consequence areas, right. I mean, those combined benefits just create an incredible story, right? A value chain, like we often say. Rhett Dotson: I mean, when there are pipelines, we know that there’s some a single feed to a power station and you can’t go down with that. Rienk De Vries: So, you know, we come across all kinds of very complex situation, you know, we have done a pipeline a while ago with an amount of bands you can’t imagine. Christopher De Leon: So, is it our understanding, is it like a tractor where you could just maybe, as you guys are developing new technologies and vehicles or canisters, you could just kind of latch it on and it can get pulled through? Rienk De Vries: Yeah, you could do that, right? We have the robot itself is something to propel your technology through the pipeline from A to B. So you can add all the sensor technologies to it eventually if you would like to do that. Rhett Dotson: So is there anything you can share on that front? Is Intero moving forward? Do you guys have any plans? I mean, you mentioned the long stream sensor, I think that’s really cool. That’s a great sensor to bring on. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, you know, there are several focus areas that we are working on extending the range of the tool. We have in-line, for example, for your in-line charging right now, but you still require this one, two-inch hot one which requires excavation. You can imagine in urban areas it’s still a hassle to write an excavation, get the permits for our customers. Christopher De Leon: And there is risk involved. It’s a well understood practice, but I mean, there’s still risk involved. Rienk De Vries: So if you could afford that in-line charging point or extend it, you know travel another mile as we have right now. We travel two miles before we need to recharge but even better or other ways to generate energy while we’re in the pipelines, then you can add way more value to your suggestion. Rhett Dotson: Put a little turbine on the back of it that just spins as the gas flows. Rienk De Vries: I’d like to hear your ideas and suggestions. We have active programs in our R&D that are actively working on it. Rhett Dotson: That’s so cool. So continuing to develop the technology, continuing to push it forward. And obviously I guess you guys must pay a lot of attention to battery developments that happen. And with everything that’s going on with electric vehicles and all of that. That’s a direct benefit to you guys. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, no absolutely. You know we follow that and if there’s some great battery capacity then we’re certainly going to benefit from that . Christopher De Leon: So one of the, I mean, we’re at PPIM. So obviously there’s a lot of inspection companies here and a lot of these guys operate in your traditional in-line device where they’re propelled with the product that’s in the line. You, I mean, I think it’s pretty fair to say that you guys are the AD leader in this difficult-to-inspect robot and we focus on the robotics maybe not so much the UT but just any comments around the overall market as it relates to difficult-to-inspect here in the US? You know, maybe some observations you see related here to PPIM? Rienk De Vries: Not specifically for North America, but in general, obviously because also on the UT side, we are in difficult to inspect. So you see this market growing. We do pipelines every year and never have been inspected before. So this market is growing. It’s growing. There is a regulation certainly here in North America, driving the demand for our robotic MFL inspections. Actually, by the way, we are also introducing the robots not through our infrastructure in other parts of the world because so far it’s only been applied in North America for North American gas grid operators. So we have brought it to Europe also offering it to European gas grid operators. We have done several inspections over the last few years. So through our organization now we can also bring it to other parts of the world. But these all have been lines that have never been inspected before with other technology. Rhett Dotson: So you get to see for the first time. Rienk De Vries: Yeah, so infrastructure is our aging regulation. Regulation is, there are more regulations implemented. So yeah this market is certainly growing, but also on the UT ILI side. So we do inspections in other parts of the world that are out there for 25, 30 years. It’s the first time that we inspect. Rhett Dotson: That anybody has seen it. It’s the first time that anybody has been inside of that pipeline. That’s a cool place to be. Well, Rienk, I want to say thank you for joining us. I also want to say, you have any last parting words you’d like to leave? Are you glad you’re here? That you came on the show? Are you going to go back and find your subordinate and be like, don’t ever put me on that show again? Rienk De Vries: We started there was to sort of a stand-in right? For me it was sort of a surprise as well. But I was glad to be here and share a little bit of what we are doing. Christopher De Leon: Well, all the best, you guys are doing a great job. You know we hear very positive things and we appreciate you making time for us. Rhett Dotson: Yeah absolutely and to our audience, we want to say thanks to Intero for joining us to get a chance to check out what they’re doing with the robotics robot, can you say that? Robotics robot? The robot is pretty freaking cool – that's all I will say. Take a look at it. And again, we’ll be back in two weeks on Pipeline Things. Thank you.