Oil & Gas: structural premium connection testing

oil and gas ind

Pinette PEI. is a well known supplier of combined load frame dedicated to connection testing. We use our expertise in testing systems to serve the largest OCTG manufacturers. The Oil & Gas industry, through its upstream division, uses three kinds of oilfield threaded tubular products, divided into two groups:

Drill pipes

The drill pipe is a tubular steel pipe with threaded ends, used to drill the soil to the oil reservoir. It is out of our testing scope.

Casing & Tubing pipes

Casing and tubing pipes are known as OCTG (Oil Country Tubular Goods):

1) Casing pipes are used to stabilize the wellbore. They are major structural components of the well, by being cemented with the walls.

2) Production tubing pipes are wellbore tubes through which oil (or gas) is produced to the pipelines.

Production strings, the conduit to the reservoir are assembled with 30 ft steel pipes linked to each other by couplings or integral connections. Each tube extremity is threaded to make the assembly. These thread characteristics are essential to qualification programs, such the ISO 13679 testing program, and subjected to full scale mechanical testing, made possible with Pinette PEI.’s testing equipment.

Pipe premium connections

pinette - pipe premium connectionTo go beyond API connection used in soft wellbore conditions, OCTG manufacturers have designed Premium connections, which distinguished themselves from API connections by:

  • a torque shoulder
  • a metal-to-metal seal, to replace the resilient seal
  • the thread forms, much more optimized.

In order to qualify these premium connections, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has elaborated unified structural premium connection testing programs. The two main standards describing the procedure are:

  • ISO 13679: Procedures for testing casing and tubing connections,
  • ISO 12835: Qualification of casing connections for thermal wells.

Pinette PEI. load frames for connection testing

Pinette PEI.’s load frames allows you to reach every standards’ requirements, and beyond, including combined loads of tension, compression, bending and combination of HPHT conditions. To complete testing procedures, the Premium connection shall also undergo multiple make and break test cycles, in order to simulate field conditions and evaluate connection galling sensitivity.