U.S. Department of Transportation

The Canadian energy sector has developed standard practices to ensure that oil and gas pipelines remain safe as they age. For the past decade, these standard practices have been influenced by a team of researchers, including one University of Alberta professor and his industrial partners, who use neutron beams to better understand stress and corrosion in pipeline steel.

Stress data obtained at the CNBC will be useful to the industry in making hundred thousand-dollar decisions about how to manage pipelines that have sustained mechanical damage, for example, as a result of a backhoe digging in the wrong place.