Petrochemical
In order to meet standards of safety today, oil wells have to be outfitted with downhole control lines to allow for an immediate shut down of production. These control lines are attached to the production tubing at one end and safety valves at the other end. The control lines are remote controlled from either the production platform or the surface wellhead. Their operation is vital to the safety of the site and therefore the material should be made of a corrosive resistant alloy incase of exposure to well fluids or seawater.

A standard stainless steel grade for this application is ASTM 316L. As a complement to the control line technology, coiled tubing is commonly used for the operation of downhole tools during workovers. Carbon steel coils are commonly used as opposed to stainless steel because of its consumable nature. The coils are used for nitrogen circulations, acid injections and other fluid circulations. However, the lifetime of these coils are limited due to lower corrosion resistance and fatigue strength. Stainless steels can offer both higher corrosion resistance and fatigue strength which in turn increases the number of possible well entries that can be attained before replacement.

Camdel Metals tubing is available in single coils with lengths up to 3650m (12000 ft.) without the need for orbital welds. The benefits of these long lengths are reduced weak area locations and minimal potential for leaks. In addition there will be reduced installation costs, because of a reduction in fittings and therefore installation time. A variety of alloys are available for this application, including 316L and other high nickel alloys with outer diameters of 1/8" to 1".

Flow Lines & Subsea Safety Valves (SSSV)
Subsea technology has recently seen new field developments which have begun to overcome previous environmental hindrances in a cost effective manner. These new developments require prospecting hundreds of miles from shore and in thousands of feet of water. Subsea tiebacks utilize flow lines to tie production from subsea wells back to existing surface production facilities, tiebacks can be in excess of 50 miles. This means that the future of oil and gas development will be geared towards exploiting these new technologies to increase oil supply and profit. This also means there will be high demand for subsea safety valves capable of managing hydraulic performing under these harsh conditions.

Ideal material will have high mechanical strength, high corrosion resistance, good weldability, and overall reliability. In the tube’s finished state it should represent resistance to collapse and buckling, no methanol permeation, short hydraulic response time, and long lifetime expectancy.

Carbon steel represents a cheap material applicable in these applications, but additional requirements exist to maintain the carbon steel in a subsea environment. For instance, the production of a hydrocarbon process stream may contain contaminants such as CO2, chlorides and formation water. If this is true, then a corrosion control system is required to maintain the composition of the carbon steel to minimize corrosive affects. Corrosion of carbon steel is further increased if H2S is present in the system, as well as the addition of high flow rate, temperature and pressure. This would make it necessary to add costly inhibitors at the wellhead and throughout the flowline near remote treatment stations. Otherwise, the conditions would become too severe for the carbon steel flowlines and piping system.

Stainless steel represents a better solution to the problem. A system made of stainless steel would be specifically designed to resist corrosion without the use of inhibitors and treatment stations can be centrally located to serve more than one well at a time. This would serve to substantially reduce the cost of treatment throughout the facility and would more than compensate for the higher initial cost of an all stainless steel flowline. Using stainless steels in subsea applications has more advantages than just high corrosion resistance. The total weight of a stainless steel piping system would be much reduced from a carbon steel system because the corrosion rate in negligible and would require no corrosion allowance. Also stainless steels are less sensitive to erosion, allow for higher flow rates, and are more environmentally friendly.

Subsea Umbilicals
Increased usage of subsea wells during the last few years has driven the need for better technology for subsea wellhead control systems. These wellhead control systems are connected to conventional processing platforms via hydraulic and electrical systems. The physical connection between the two stations is called an umbilical and represents a very sensitive link and requires a highly reliable system.

Originally, thermoplastic hoses were used as a conduit for hydraulic fluids and methanol, designed to dissolve hydrates impeding the flow of hydrocarbons within the flowlines. Steel tube umbilical cords were eventually discovered to have favorable characteristics such as higher yield strengths even with reduced wall thicknesses while operating under high pressure. Also, stainless steels represented the added bonus of high resistance to localized corrosion, giving the system a longer lifetime of reliability. Subsea offshore excursions now reach water depths of over 2500 meters, which makes it all that much more important that the tubing be able to meet the high demands. High hydrostatic water pressure makes the strength properties found in stainless steel even more important today.

Heat Tracing
Heat tracing, or surface heating, is the method of heating and/or maintaining temperatures in pipelines, tanks and vessels. Heat tracing tube is typically pre-insulated tubing specifically designed to solve heat tracing problems associated with process analyzers and other instrumentation. This tubing is widely used in refining, petrochemical processing, and power generation. Applications usually require the heat tracing tube to maintain sample temperatures as well as insulation and encapsulation.

Before this tube is ready for use in the field, it starts off at Camdel Metals as seamless stainless steel coil tubing. Typically OEM's purchase this seamless coil tubing and insulate the tube while keeping it in coil form so that it can be "cut to length" in the field and directly applied as a component to a complete system.

Geothermal Power
The concept behind Geothermal Power is not entirely new, having first been harnessed in Italy circa 1904. Geothermal power is generated by utilizing the earth's heat in areas where ground temperatures are very high at shallow depths. There are four types of power plant systems today which are used to harness geothermal energy; dry steam, salt, flash, and binary systems. The first type of plant was dry steam, where steam coming out of a well deep in the earth rises and is directly routed through turbines which in turn generate energy. The most common type of system used today is a flash system, where water under pressure reaches temperatures of 360 degree Fahrenheit and is then pumped to the power generation equipment at the surface.

Within this flash power system, to maximize the life of the well, it is necessary to introduce chemicals which prevent calcite deposits from forming and blocking flow through the well. This is where the Camdel Metals advantage of long length seamless tubing separates us from the competition. Without excess welds, our tubing can be used to run the length of the well to inject calcite inhibitor chemicals at the flash point were blockage is most likely to occur. This will ensure the long life of the well and the continued supply of a reliable energy source. As technology improves, Geothermal Power sources have the potential of becoming a truly renewable energy source.

Shipbuilding
The shipbuilding industry has grown leaps and bounds in recent years with new regulations requiring repair, reengineering and reconstruction as well as a large backlog for new construction. This trend has been driven by economic globalization and the consequent increase in marine freight.

Within the shipbuilding industry long coiled tubing is used for hydraulic remote control lines, gauging, gas detection, sampling, pneumatic control and various instrumentation applications. Seamless tubing ensures highly reliable system operation on marine and offshore oil platform installations. The tubing can be multi-bundled, sheathed or bare. Typical metric sizes are 6mm to 12mm in outer diameter and 0.5mm to 1.0mm in wall thickness. Imperial sizes are typically 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 by 0.035 and 0.049 wall thickness. Long continuous lengths can be connected to a respective terminal without intermediate joints or slices over long distances.