Capable coiled tubing
September 1st 2006

A manufacturing and supply capability for seamless, stainless steel tubes in coils for hydraulic and instrumentation systems and for control lines and chemical injection lines, is being promoted to the process industries by Sandvik Materials Technology.

The tubing has the advantage of being produced in a totally integrated manufacturing process - from steel melt to finished product.

Consequently the quality of the product is consistently high, from batch to batch and delivery to delivery.

Advantages of the system are; reduced system installation times and costs, higher system integrity and reduced inspection costs.

In the oil and gas industry, a typical coiled tube application is for continuous, small bore down hole control lines, around 1/4 inch outside diameter, to provide a constant pressure to subsurface safety valves.

Similar lines in diameters up to 3/4 inch are used for downhole chemical injection for methanol or acid injection. More recently, duplex stainless steel coiled tubing has been seen as offering an interesting alternative to carbon steels during workovers of production wells - an operation in which nitrogen, fluids or acid are injected to stimulate production.