I-TUBING

Features

The I-tubing is highly insulated tubing, featuring major innovations for the insulation materials and design. This revolutionary pipe-in-pipe can be used to transport:

  • Oil from the reservoir to the surface while keeping the crude hot and avoiding wax deposition
  • High quality steam downhole

The coupling is the weakest thermal point for existing insulated systems. For a classically insulated pipe more than 80% of the heat loss is through the junction. MAJUS offers 2 solutions to dramatically reduce the heat loss at the coupling.

Moreover the I-tubing fulfill two other major requirements of the industry for insulated tubing:

  • To fit any tubing and any coupling base on your standard.
  • To use high performance insulation material, innovative in our industry, but already in service for many years in the nuclear industry for example.

The three main features are:

  • Dedicated bayonet type connection design
  • Overall U-value less than 0.8 W/(m².K)
  • Operating temperatures up to 350°C
  • Much longer life than other vacuum insulated tubings thanks to softer vacuum.

Applications

The I-tubing can be used with benefits in several application categories:

Production assurance : To ensure the flow of the upward recovered oil or gas. For example, waxy and paraffinic oilfields may require a highly insulated tubings to keep producing. For the gas wells, many studies show the benefit of a high insulation to postpone the gas well self-killing.

Protect the completion : In cold environment or in case of APB, the I-tubing strongly reduces the heat transfer between the transported fluid and the tubing's environment to protect the well integrity.

Steam injection : To optimize the oil recovery, I-tubing helps maintaining a much better downhole steam quality. Its design have been developed for HPHT conditions : the conducted fluid in the I-tubing can be at a temperature up to 600°F (315°C).

Benefits

The I-tubing offers an excellent thermal performance. The heat losses are strongly reduced compared to the others solutions on the market (more than 7 times). Its design is suitable for HPHT, which opens new perspectives for the insulation requirements for deep well and for steam injection. The development of the I-tubing was made in collaboration with completion experts to fulfill the main requirements in terms of completion: compact, the I-tubing fits any tubing and any coupling and no additional installation work is required: as easy to install as your standard tubing. The adaptation of insulation material used in the nuclear industry leads to a cost driven innovative solution with a quick pay back thanks to the energy and operations savings.

Majus I-tubing were designed in order to drastically reduce the heat losses at the junction between pipes where industry consider that 90% of heat losses occur in conventional insulating tubings, leading to overall U-values over 5 W/(m².K) or 1 BTU/hr-ft²-°F even if k-value on the body are as low as 0.0026 W/(m.K) or 0.0015 BTU/hr-ft-°F.

Majus I-tubing annulus pressure is about 10,000 times higher than the conventional VIT, therefore there is no degradation of the insulation performances over time due to outgassing.