The International Pipeline Community meets in Berlin

By Rafat Ibrahim

Pipeline operators from all over the world take part in Europe’s leading industry event: the 15th Pipeline Technology Conference and Exhibition (ptc) in Berlin.

The leading European event for the pipeline industry is now taking place for the 15th time, this time from 30 March to 2 April 2020 in Berlin’s Estrel Congress Center. The ptc provides the international pipeline industry with a platform to discuss technical challenges and solutions and to discuss the future of the entire industry. Europe’s most important pipeline event is growing from year to year: “For 2020, too, we as organisers expect growth of between 15 and 20% compared to the previous year,” says Dr. Klaus Ritter, President of the EITEP Institute.

For them, there is a series of high-ranking plenary sessions and panel discussions, all of which deal with topics of interest to operators worldwide. This includes classic topics such as “Safety” as well as current challenges in the areas of “Qualification & Recruitment”, “Difficult to Inspect Pipelines”, “Illegal Tapping” and “Climate Adaption”. Important future topics such as hydrogen transport and Power-to-X are also included in the programme.

Another unique selling point of the ptc is its internationality: “About two thirds of the participants come from abroad. Last year, we saw the greatest growth from Latin America and Eastern Europe, a large proportion of which were pipeline operators,” says Dennis Fandrich, Chairman of the Pipeline Technology Conference. This makes ptc the most international event of its kind in the world.

The conference will be accompanied by a trade exhibition at which leading technology and service providers and pipeline operators will be able to present their innovative pipe solutions. The suppliers will be present throughout the entire lifecycle of the pipeline. With more than 90 exhibitors, a new record is also expected in this area in 2020.
The conference and the trade exhibition will be complemented by thematically oriented one-day seminars, workshops and operator discussion rounds in which participants will be able to delve deeper into various topics.

As every year, the conference papers will be made available to the specialist public via the freely accessible “Pipeline Open Knowledge Base”: https://www.pipeline-conference.com/abstracts.