GE Oil & Gas has unveiled its next-generation blowout preventer (BOP) program aimed at making 20,000psi (20ksi) subsea formations the next frontier in offshore oil and gas exploration.
Current GE subsea BOPs are only rated for 15ksi. However, because the physical demands of 20ksi drilling (at depths of up to 12,500 ft) are so different from existing 15-ksi systems, GE used its global technology teams to completely reengineer the new BOP stack’s components and also developed several new techniques and technologies with its project partners.
Key features of the new 20-ksi BOP system include:
The new 20ksi BOPs will be manufactured at GE Oil & Gas’ Drilling Systems facilities in Houston, with technical support provided by GE centers of excellence worldwide.
“GE’s new BOP system will enable operators to explore deepwater basins that are currently inaccessible with conventional 15ksi BOP systems,” said Andrew Way, president and CEO of GE’s Drilling & Surface business—GE Oil & Gas. “Our new BOP system utilizes all of GE’s latest “Predictivity” communications software solutions to allow for real-time remote monitoring of equipment status and performance, thus offering new degrees of reliability and performance.”
GE’s 20ksi project uses a number of new GE Industrial Internet technologies, such as SeaONYX and SeaLytics.
In a separate announcement, GE announced it had secured the first two orders for its new SeaLytics BOP (blowout preventer) Advisor software system with US-based drilling contractor Atwood Oceanics and Brazilian drilling contractor Queiroz Galvão Óleo e Gás (QGOG).
The contracts were announced during Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston.
With GE’s SeaLytics BOP Advisor monitoring and predictive maintenance solution, drilling contractors are now able to monitor the performance of BOPs and proactively plan their maintenance by using predictive analytics based on actual component performance data.
SeaLytics BOP Advisor was the first GE Oil & Gas product to be developed at GE’s Software Center of Excellence in San Ramon, California, taking advantage of software development expertise from across the entire GE organization. The Software COE brings together the biggest ideas and latest technologies from across GE, enabling products like SeaLytics BOP Advisor to take full advantage of the company’s expertise and broad investment in Industrial Internet technologies and solutions. Such new ecosystems of connected machines have the potential to increase industrial efficiency, minimize waste and enable the people operating the systems to make smarter decisions.
Underscoring the importance of this product, SeaLytics BOP Advisor was selected as a 2014 OTC Technology Spotlight Award winner. In keeping with the criteria for winning technologies, GE’s technology offers broad appeal for the offshore industry and provides significant benefits beyond existing products and also has been proven through full-scale application or successful prototype testing.