Pigs. Oil. Brushes. Swine art? Nay – or oink? Either way, you’re way off. Pig brushes mean oil pipeline cleaning for some of the world’s biggest oil companies – and they&#82… ...

If you think about it, it makes sense. For years, companies that deal with pipes would shoot large slugs, or “pigs”, through the pipeline to scrape them clean.

BOYCE: But pipeline experts say that smart pigs are no panacea. They can't detect all kinds of damage - like a scrape from a backhoe that's working above a pipeline. Pigs have other problems.

The maintenance and integrity of pipeline networks are critical to global energy infrastructure. Pipeline inspection and pigging operations employ specialised devices – commonly known as PIGs ...

These devices, which may include scrapers or brushes on the pig body, are inserted in a pipeline, or launched, and traveled downstream with the gas flow. In its report, NTSB noted that periodic use of ...

In addition, no damage to the coating was observed after subsequent brush pigging and MFL tool inspection verifying the coating’s abrasion resistance to routine pigging and ILI inspection.

The operator of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System was on the lookout Monday for a piece of a cleaning device -- called a pig -- that mysteriously got dislodged somewhere inside the 800-mile oil ...