Pipelines whether in the oil and gas, petrochemical, water or other industries, represent a huge investment and are required to operate continuously and safely for their entire design life. Anything that detracts from this goal is totally undesirable and every endeavour must be made to prevent all occurrences that might jeopardise the safe and efficient running of the pipeline operation. Corrosion is one of those occurrences that will affect the safe and efficient running of the pipeline with the costs for shut down, lost production, product loss, environment contamination and loss of customer confidence running into millions of Euros. Coating degradation problems that lead to the creation of a corrosion risk within the design life of a pipeline can mainly be attributed to one of the following causes:

• an inappropriate specification for the coating material and/or coating process

• poor surface preparation and/or application

• Interaction with the operating environment like humidity, salts, winds, temperatures

Poor surface preparation and coating application continues to create problems with premature degradation, particularly loss of adhesion resulting in disbondment.