Oliver Twinsafe Trunnion Mounted valves and Floating Ball Valves have successfully been SIL certified at level 3. This new and important milestone provides operators with safety assurances at the highest level and has resulted from many months of engineering design, QA reviews, and audits.
A SIL (Safety Integrity Level) is a measure of safety system performance, in terms of probability of failure on demand (PFD). The higher the SIL level, the higher the associated safety level, and the lower probability that a system will fail to perform properly. SIL 3 is the highest rating that can be given to a valve.
High Integrity Pressure Protection Systems (HIPPS) and remotely located well-head manifolds are normally associated with SIL certification. Operators are to gain additional safety assurances from installing our ball valves, in that, when the valve is required to perform its fail-safe function, the probability of it not performing is extremely low.
SIL 3 certification has been awarded by Exida, a third-party safety assessment organisation. The certification covers our range of Single Isolate valves, and Double Block and Bleed valves comprising two separate isolates within the assembly. Bore sizes for Trunnion Mounted valves range from 1” – 16” and 1” – 3” on Floating Ball valves.
Oliver Valves is pleased to welcome Tom Nesbitt as Regional Sales Manager with primary responsibility for the Southern area of the UK, France, North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Tom has worked in the Energy Industry for over ten years, gaining broad experience in Technical Sales, Project Management and Supply Chain roles, focusing on high-criticality valves within FPSO and EPC/Operator environments.
It’s an exciting time for Tom to join Oliver Valves as the company embarks on its next phase of advanced piping valve solutions, including enhanced zero-leakage performance in severe service and applications for transition energy markets such as Hydrogen and Carbon Capture.
Tom brings to the role significant experience and insight from both the valve-user and manufacturer market, saying “I’m excited to have joined Oliver Valves at a time of significant growth and market development and look forward to working with an outstanding engineering team to support our clients and their projects with the very best valve solutions.”
Oliver Valvetek has manufactured a number of 1” Double Block Subsea Gate Valves with manual and hydraulic actuation destined for the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).
This dual functioning valve consists of a 1” hydraulic gate valve and a 1” multi-turn manual Gate valve both positioned on a single unitary forged valve block for dual redundancy and functionality. This unique and customised design brings additional benefits to subsea tree engineers in that it now provides flexibility to be used as stand-alone and fully functioning valves on other applications of the tree due to its standardised valve footprint.
To date, Oliver Valvetek has manufactured more than 150 double gate valves with the hydraulic gate valve being a coil spring design as specified by the end-user.
Interestingly, a continental shelf is a shallow and relatively flat stretch of seabed that extends from the shoreline to water depths of around 200 metres, before dropping off to deeper waters in what’s called the continental slope.
The importance of the continental shelf to Norway is that it holds huge natural resources such as oil and gas, but also fishing. The best-known fishing areas are found on the Shelf and at the edges where it meets the deep sea. Under international law, coastal states are entitled to their continental shelf up to 200 nautical miles from their shores with some exceptions made to lengthen this, with NCS being one.
For information on how Oliver Valvetek can provide subsea valve solutions for your project, telephone +44(0)1565 632 636 or visit our website at www.valves.co.uk
Manufactured to customer’s specifications, 14″ reduced bore Double Block and Bleed Pipeline Valves are currently on final test – Class 900 valves in LF2 Carbon Steel with Inconel 625 trim.
The order is for part of Qatar’s North Field Production Sustainability (NFPS) project, with the valves heading for the North Field, the world’s largest natural gas field.
For information on how Oliver Twinsafe can provide pipeline valve solutions for your project, telephone +44 (0) 1565 632636 or visit our website at www.valves.co.uk
Our onsite UK manufacturing and testing facilities enable us to provide complete and customised valve solutions up to 20” bore and with reassuring reliability and quality. From engineering design, pressure testing, and painting, to global shipping – we handle the whole process.
A recent example of this and now nearing the final stages of a year-long production run are 20mm Bore, Trunnion Double Block & Bleed Valves, tested to 5,000 API.
For information on how Oliver Valves can provide instrumentation and DBB valve solutions for your project, telephone +44(0)1565 632 636 or visit our website at www.valves.co.uk
Oliver Valvetek identifies new and emerging opportunities to supply higher pressure small-bore subsea valves, and recognises the technical barriers that hinder most other valve suppliers.
The subsea oil and gas industry has been rapidly developing new technology to allow the development of ‘challenging fields’. These challenges are usually associated with high pressure, high temperature (HP/HT), and operation at great depths.
Fields with pressures of 15,000psi (1034bar) were generally considered high pressure, however, new fields are now being discovered and developed for well bore production with working pressures of 20,000 psi (1380 bar).
Oliver Valvetek had already successfully designed and qualified a 3/8” Nominal Bore 20,000 CWP needle valve for a High Pressure / High Temperature field development in the Gulf of Mexico.
Utilising this specialist and field-proven history with Shell Appomattox, Oliver Valvetek successfully developed and tested a Dual and Tripe Gate valve assembly in accordance with API6A PR2F, API 17D and API 17G.
The journey started early in 2021, Oliver Valvetek scoped out opportunities to supply other small-bore High Pressure / High Temperature valves to these new and technically challenging fields. Working closely with Trendsetter Engineering based in Houston on their modular Trident 20K Intervention System, Trendsetter and Oliver Valvetek engineers began work on designing valves that would meet these new high pressure, high temperature requirements.
Subsea small-bore valves have to conform to the same rigorous standards for design, qualification and manufacture as the much larger bore valves. Rapid demand for smaller compact HP/HT valves has mainly been due to increased numbers of 20,000psi fields being reviewed for development.
Clearly, the technical challenge for our engineering team, was how to achieve subsea qualification testing on much smaller and compact valves at much higher pressures and temperatures, and in rapid time. Importantly not compromising on Safety, which remains critical for valves being installed in these applications.
Work began in March 2021 to develop two valve types that were required for critical application of flow control and monitoring on the Trident 20K Intervention System – ½” Double Gate Valve and ½” Triple Gate Valve, both manufactured using Nickel Alloy 718 material.
Project technical specification requirement:
High Pressure 20,000 psi
High Temperature +150°C / +302°F
Operating Depth 3:048m / 10,000 ft
Small bore gate valves are often used for chemical injection, venting flowlines and bypass lines, and these valves can be required in single isolate arrangements but also in double and triple or 3 valve assemblies.
Weight is a crucial factor for equipment being lifted and installed on the subsea. Using the very latest in elastic-plastic finite element software, valve designs have been optimised to produce the most compact small-bore valve to operate subsea at 20,000 psi high pressure.
API technical reports provided the necessary guidance to our engineering team, and client, on analysis tools and design processes for HP/HT subsea equipment.
This resulted in a Double Gate Valve comprising of 2 x manual Gate Valves in one block, and a Triple Gate valve with a combination of both manual and hydraulic functions. The full valve designs were subject to numerous technical assessments as part of the API qualification, followed by strict design evaluations including; FMECA, Elastic-plastic analysis, Ratcheting Assessment, and Fatigue Assessment, all of which were reviewed and verified by nominated I3P’s such as the Bureau of Safety & Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).
Prototype testing takes many weeks to simulate valve operation at varying pressures, temperatures and working depths. Hydraulic actuated valves require separate testing on the hydraulic operation and the override operation.
Steve Williams explains the extent of the testing process, “Close client collaboration and extensive technical evaluations were instrumental to the success, as too, were the independent design and process validation by Third-Party and client Regulatory bodies evaluating all aspects of the design for Safety, Quality and long-term reliability.
“Enhanced QC & QA procedures at each stage of production of both valves were implemented, including body integrity pressure testing up to 30,000 psi. Even before the order could proceed, the ½” gate valve was subject to extensive in-house qualification procedures that simulated the intervention system, in an extreme pressure and temperature environment deployed subsea – all conducted in our own state of the art R&D facility.”
He continues “Valves operating in such extreme environments require extensive and arduous qualification testing to meet API standards. This project was the most technically reviewed and evaluated one we’ve ever undertaken, and by far, the most rewarding for our engineers and designers. Everyone involved in the project is acutely aware of the leaps we’ve made in terms of research & development, engineering design, and manufacturing processes. We’re all very proud of this achievement and very much look forward to future developments with our clients.”
For more information on how Oliver Valvetek can supply your subsea project with the very best valve solutions, contact us on +44 (0)1565 632 636 or email sales@valves.co.uk Website: www.valves.co.uk
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