Technology

Vallourec will also provide tubular management services. (Image source: Vallourec)

TotalEnergies has contracted tubular solutions provider Vallourec to source 5,000 tonnes of OCTG solutions and associated services for the Kaminho deepwater project

Situated on Block 20, 100 km off the coast of Angola, Vallourec will supply VAM connections with its green, dope-free solution, Cleanwell. 

Early this month, a deal for 13-well subsea production system, including associated equipment and services, was closed by Total with SLB OneSubsea venture for the development of the Kaminho project. 

Providing offshore expertise

Vallourec will also provide its offshore expertise via VAM Field Service as well as its tubular management services (TMS) offering, which ensures tubes preparation and inspection before they are dispatched for the drilling platform. This service also covers the phase when the tubes are returened for storage.

While the products will be manufactured at the company's production hubs in France, Brazil, and Indonesia, Vallourec has a strong customer base across Africa, especially in Nigeria, Gabon, Congo, and Mozambique.

In Namibia, the company has supplied around 5,000 tonnes of tubes and connections. also for a TotalEnergies project. Recently, TotalEnergies have farmed into Block 3B/4B in Orange Basin. 

Philippe Guillemot, chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO, said, “We are proud to support TotalEnergies in its developments and exploration projects. I would like to thank the Vallourec teams for their commitment.”

Saipem will contribute to managing the integrity of a fundamental underwater infrastructure. (Image source: Adobe Stock)

Saipem has been awarded a contract to ensure the supervision and the subsea intervention services of the GreenStream pipeline throughout the offshore and onshore sections at the Mellitah (Libya) and Gela (Sicily, Italy) terminals

Last year, the Mellitah Oil & Gas BV Libyan Branch awarded Saipem a new contract for the development of the Bouri Gas Utilisation Project (BGUP), worth approximately US$1bn.

The new contract, awarded by GreenStream BV, one of the leading midstream players in the Mediterranean Sea, merges the activities that Saipem has been undertaking for GreenStream since 2008 as to asset integrity, inspection, maintenance and emergency pipeline services, and expands them to cover a wider range of scenarios and customer’s needs.

The activities will be managed by Sonsub, Saipem’s centre of excellence for robotics, underwater technologies and services, and executed in coordination with the Saipem Engineering Hub located in Fano, Italy.

Streamlining repair works

The scope of work streamlines the integrated management of survey data and critical spares, the provision of specialised engineering services related to asset integrity and readiness services for repair interventions in case of a wide range of damage scenarios. Specifically, repair interventions in case of damage will be performed via the SiRCoS technology, a remotely operated repair system industrialised by Sonsub and qualified to operate in water depths of up to 2,200 meters.

With this award Saipem will contribute to managing the integrity of a fundamental underwater infrastructure for the Italian energy supply with an integrated approach, thus confirming the company’s leadership in the underwater domain with promptly available and efficient solutions. It also consolidates the long-term cooperation between Saipem and GreenStream BV, which in 2002 awarded the company a contract for the pipelaying of said pipeline, a project thanks to which Saipem achieved the record for the deepest pipelaying with anchors. 

The Libyan National Oil Company has launched a sustainability strategy that includes an 83% reduction in gas flaring by 2030, pooling collaborative efforts from nine oil subsidiaries, Mellitah being one of them. 

The partnership will aim to establish digital solutions to address the key challenges within the sector. (Image source: SLB)

SLB and TotalEnergies have announced a 10-year partnership to co-develop scalable digital solutions to enable access to energy resources with improved performance and efficiency while establishing a flexible framework to address key challenges including carbon capture, utilisation, and sequestration (CCUS)

CCUS is currently dawning in Africa, with initiatives in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Algeria.

The companies will integrate advanced digital capabilities, including the use of AI with new and existing applications on SLB’s extensible Delfi digital platform. SLB and TotalEnergies will combine digital and domain expertise to accelerate the development and deployment of these solutions at scale, benefiting TotalEnergies’ global operations and SLB’s worldwide customer base.

The partnership will initially focus on subsurface digital solutions for reservoir engineering and geoscience modelling and interpretation, leveraging Delfi on-demand reservoir simulation (ODRS).

Developing new algorithms for geoscience 

Rakesh Jaggi, president of SLB’s Digital & Integration business, said, “Collaboration and knowledge sharing are key for our industry to continuously develop more effective ways of unlocking energy access. With this visionary partnership, we are combining the know-how and expertise of both companies to accelerate the delivery of new digital capabilities that will benefit the whole industry.”

Namita Shah, president, OneTech at TotalEnergies, commented, “Through this digital partnership we will develop cutting-edge next-generation software, digital applications and new algorithms applied to geoscience.

“Thanks to these innovative modelling technologies, we will not only be better able to utilise the analyses of geological reservoirs and basins in the oil and gas sector, to reduce emissions, but also make further progress in geological carbon storage.”

The 1.5mtpa-storage-capacity Habshan CCUS project, one of the largest in the MENA region, that was initiated by ADNOC last year, is a testament to the region's carbon storage progress. 

The MQTT protocol will make data more accessible and accurate. (Image source: Intelligent Wellhead Systems)

Introducing a new, effective path to seamlessly attaining hydraulic fracturing, oil and gas digitalisation provider Intelligent Wellhead Systems and hydraulic fracturing services company ProFrac have announced the first successful field tests of the message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol for the safe and efficient transfer and visualisation of wellsite data during the fracturing process 

Speaking of how this method replaces the complicated process of manual data entry, having to send it prior operations and set up the right channels, Bob Duncan, IWS vice president of product strategy, explained, "Currently, wellsite data is transmitted during fracturing operations by a standard communications cable using comma separated value (CSV) protocol. While this method is robust, it is quite limited in what it can do, particularly with changes in the data being transmitted. A better solution is MQTT, a modern communication protocol that allows more data information than standard CSV protocol. Metadata, including the channel name for each data curve, can now be sent. Instead of mapping just the serial order of data, the data channel name can now be mapped as well." 

Intelligent has been recognised for its novel solutions in the market such as Wellsite Watch that optimises management tasks for wellsite operations personnel. 

Accurate and reliable data transmission

MQTT not only makes the mapping process simpler, but has it all covered even before the fracturing process begins, bringing in a marked diiference with reduced time and cost of data manipulation.

When the limitations of manual data entering is removed, the quality of data gets enhanced and becomes reliable enough to produce strong analysis and reports, especially strengthening downstream operations. 

“The MQTT protocol will make our data more accessible and more accurate. The result will be a better job for the customer,” Chris Hall, director-IT application development for ProFrac Services said. This invention will add to the rising trend of predictive maintenance in the oil and gas sector, allowing prompt identification and resolution of industry challenges. 

To assess MQTT's wellsite connectivity and data transmission capabilities, ProFac and Intelligent collaborated with an operator in the Haynesville. The protocol has been deployed on two two-well pads in the Haynesville shale, and a three-well pad in West Texas. An additional three-well pad in the Haynesville is also ongoing. 

“Once the job commences, data is now easily transmitted accurately and reliably. We are no longer dependent on aligning channel order and are now mapping based on previously agreed channels. This negates the issues brought on by changing channel names or channel order during the job. From an operator perspective, it’s been refreshing to see the service provider and aggregator work together and collaborate to provide a solution,” said the completions engineer from the operating company.