Oliver Valvetek News
Oliver Valvetek and AWC Winning Together
A number of 1” Hydraulic Actuated Gate Valves were put into production with stringent completion dates assigned to the order.
Manufacturing sometimes complex subsea valve designs takes a large amount of production planning, and changes to the schedule can result in significant delays. Thankfully, when the end-user halted production in mid-build for over a month, the Oliver Valvetek team, who are well-versed in these scenarios, put an action-plan in place to resume production and worked with AWC to find solutions that would still meet with the original production schedules.
This is a typical example of Oliver Valveteks’ resilience and resourcefulness to always do what can be done for its customers, and of the strong relationships we have with our trusted distributors.
Oliver Valvetek completes final shipment of 313 Subsea Gate Valves to the Petrobras Mero 4 project.
The Mero 4 field lies about 125 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has water depths of around 2,200m in the pre-salt Santos basin.
The scope of work for this project was the manufacture of ½” Hydraulic, ½” Manual and 1″ hydraulic Gate Valves and commenced in March 2023. Qualification to the latest Petrobras valve specification requirements was required and was achieved simultaneously with the valves in production.
The complexity of the project and valve designs required a fully collaborative approach with the tree manufacturer, resulting in best in class process and end user engagement principles to project manage this order.
Oliver Valvetek hybrid Gate Valve designs meet customer specifications
Oliver Valvetek’s unique approach to Subsea valve design and manufacturing is exemplary and world-leading. Engineering teams often take-on, sometimes, very complex and difficult to manufacture valve concepts and specifications required by customers, and to see them on the production line is truly remarkable.
One recent example is a Subsea Gate Valve that was designed with the Actuator on an extension piece, and used in operation on a Total Moho Infill Subsea Project. This hybrid design allowed the valve to be fully covered by Christmas Tree insulation with the actuator on the outside of the insulation process. [picture shows prior to painting]
Oliver Valvetek qualify Trunnion Ball Valve in 316 Stainless Steel to +121 DegC
Working in close collaboration with Oliver’s Research and Development Centre, Oliver Valvetek has successfully designed, qualified and manufactured a range of 3/8” Trunnion mounted small bore valves in 316 Stainless Steel tested to temperatures of +121 Deg C.
The use of 316 Stainless Steel material isn’t normally selected for operating temperatures above +60 Deg C due to NACE requirements, however, our engineering team have developed valves in both 2-way and 3-way configurations that can be used specifically on Hydraulic lines and not in contact with well bore fluid (H2S contact).
This valve offers a commercial cost saving over the use of other materials such as Super Duplex, which would be typically used for such applications.
Oliver Valvetek supplies first 15,000 Psi Trunnion Dual Stem Sealing Ball Valves for Exxon Mobil Uaru
Oliver Valvetek’s unique approach to Subsea valve design and manufacturing is exemplary and world-leading. They partner with one of the leading Subsea Tree and Subsea Distribution Units manufacturers in the world and is supplying valves to the Exxon Mobil Guyana Futures field.
For the past 5 years, Oliver Valvetek has provided more than 3000 pieces of ½” 10,000psi rated Subsea Trunnion style Ball Valves for the full field development. Due to changes in production, control system requirements, and an operation pressure increase, Exxon Mobil also required a 15,000psi rated valve.
Oliver Valvetek successfully qualified a valve to API6A PR2F and API17D 3rd Ed and included specialist testing and materials that were specific to the pressure and process media application.
Oliver Valvetek wins a multi-million-pound export order to manufacture Subsea Gate Valves
Manufacturing capacity, engineering excellence and client required product qualifications were the key drivers to securing the order, and it was placed on an expedited delivery with the first shipments due to leave the UK at the end of January 2024.
The order that includes a mix of ½” Hydraulic, ½”Manual and 1″ hydraulic Gate Valves which required extremely demanding and specialist client driven qualification testing. This was successfully completed by
Oliver Valvetek engineers at our state-of-the-art Research and Development facility in Knutsford, England.
A total of 480 Gate Valves will be manufactured in Inconel 625 and Super Duplex materials and shipped directly to a tree manufacturer in Brazil where final assembly into twenty Subsea Christmas Trees will take place.
