Design Aspects of the Zap-Lok® Connection for Onshore and Offshore Applications

Author(s):  
Ben Chapman

The Zap-Lok® joint is a mechanical interference connection that, under certain conditions, utilises applied loads to energise a metal-to-metal seal face. One end of the pipe is cold-formed to form a ‘bell’ and the other is formed into a spigot or ‘pin’ as shown in figure 1. These are then subsequently joined in the field by means of a hydraulic press. The technology has been applied in numerous permanent oil and gas applications both onshore and offshore as an alternative to conventional welding where its inherent speed of construction and mechanical integrity provide a useful means of performing well hook ups. The purpose of this paper is to draw from the wealth of testing that has been conducted on the Zap-Lok® joint over recent years and present a fully verifiable analytical modelling technique that describes the stress-strain behaviour under typical static operational loading conditions as an orthotropic material. This shall be put forth in the form of a series of stress strain curves as well as a maximum strength model. In addition, certain requirements shall be put into place in order that pipeline engineers and designers may put into context the various load parameters that exist can be interpreted under the ASME B31 suite of pipeline design codes in order that design and installation shall comply with the aforementioned codes.

Author(s):  
Susan Jaques

Canada and Australia are remarkably similar countries. Characteristics such as geography, politics, native land issues, and population are notably similar, while the climate may be considered the most obvious difference between the two countries. The pipeline industries are similar as well, but yet very different in some respects too. This presentation will explore some of the similarities and differences between the pipeline industries in both countries. The focus of the discussion will be mainly on long-distance, cross-country gas transmission pipelines. The author of this paper spent 4 years working for TransCanada PipeLines in Calgary in a pipeline design and construction capacity, and has spent 2.5 years working for an engineering consultant firm, Egis Consulting Australia, in a variety of roles on oil and gas projects in Australia. Topics to be addressed include the general pipeline industry organisation and the infrastructure in both countries. The history of the development of the pipeline industry in each country provides insight as to why each is organised the way it is today. While neither system is “better” than the other, there are certain advantages to Canada’s system (nationally regulated) over Australia’s system (currently state-regulated). The design codes of each country will be compared and contrasted. The pipeline design codes alternate in level of detail and strictness of requirements. Again, it cannot be said that one is “better” than the other, although in some cases one country’s code is much more useful than the other for pipeline designers. Construction techniques affected by the terrain and climate in each country will be explored. Typical pipeline construction activities are well known to pipeliners all over the globe: clear and grade, trench, string pipe, weld pipe, coat welds, lower in, backfill and clean up. The order of these activities may change, depending on the terrain and the season, and the methods of completing each activity will also depend on the terrain and the season, however the principles remain the same. Australia and Canada differ in aspects such as climate, terrain and watercourse type, and therefore each country has developed methods to handle these issues. Finally, some of the current and future opportunities for the 21st century for the pipeline industry in both countries will be discussed. This discussion will include items such as operations and maintenance issues, Canada’s northern development opportunities, and Australia’s national gas grid possibilities.


2009 ◽  
pp. 18-31
Author(s):  
G. Rapoport ◽  
A. Guerts

In the article the global crisis of 2008-2009 is considered as superposition of a few regional crises that occurred simultaneously but for different reasons. However, they have something in common: developed countries tend to maintain a strong level of social security without increasing the real production output. On the one hand, this policy has resulted in trade deficit and partial destruction of market mechanisms. On the other hand, it has clashed with the desire of several oil and gas exporting countries to receive an exclusive price for their energy resources.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 757
Author(s):  
Yongke Pan ◽  
Kewen Xia ◽  
Li Wang ◽  
Ziping He

The dataset distribution of actual logging is asymmetric, as most logging data are unlabeled. With the traditional classification model, it is hard to predict the oil and gas reservoir accurately. Therefore, a novel approach to the oil layer recognition model using the improved whale swarm algorithm (WOA) and semi-supervised support vector machine (S3VM) is proposed in this paper. At first, in order to overcome the shortcomings of the Whale Optimization Algorithm applied in the parameter-optimization of the S3VM model, such as falling into a local optimization and low convergence precision, an improved WOA was proposed according to the adaptive cloud strategy and the catfish effect. Then, the improved WOA was used to optimize the kernel parameters of S3VM for oil layer recognition. In this paper, the improved WOA is used to test 15 benchmark functions of CEC2005 compared with five other algorithms. The IWOA–S3VM model is used to classify the five kinds of UCI datasets compared with the other two algorithms. Finally, the IWOA–S3VM model is used for oil layer recognition. The result shows that (1) the improved WOA has better convergence speed and optimization ability than the other five algorithms, and (2) the IWOA–S3VM model has better recognition precision when the dataset contains a labeled and unlabeled dataset in oil layer recognition.


Catalysts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Miguel Ladero

Energy policies in the US and in the EU during the last decades have been focused on enhanced oil and gas recovery, including the so-called tertiary extraction or enhanced oil recovery (EOR), on one hand, and the development and implementation of renewable energy vectors, on the other, including biofuels as bioethanol (mainly in US and Brazil) and biodiesel (mainly in the EU) [...]


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