LONDON: As the oil industry moves into ever deeper waters engineering firms Magma Global and Airborne are competing to develop piping that can take the heat and the corrosion of production in places such as Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico.
For years steel piping has dominated oil and gas market but with projects in Brazil's pre-salt going beyond 2,000 metres under the sea and corrosive enhanced oil recovery techniques now used widely, companies are looking for more flexible and durable materials.
British engineering company Magma Global and Dutch counterpart Airborne are pioneering composite pipes made from a fusion of high-end fibres and plastics which are up to 90 percent lighter than steel pipes and do not corrode.
That could bring them head to head with France's Technip and NKT Flexibles, majority owned by Danish group NKT Holdings, which use layered steel with a stainless steel or plastic lining and make the main offshore pipes.
The UK and Dutch private companies have caught the attention of the oil majors and have contracts with companies such as Shell, Total, BP and Exxon.
"What you're really doing is taking world class composites engineering expertise and applying it to the oil and gas market," said Mike Sibson, investor at the Business Growth Fund (BGF) an initiative to finance small firms backed by a number of British banks.
BGF invested 8.8 million pounds ($13.46 million) in Magma earlier this year for a manufacturing facility in Southampton. "All the commercial attraction is for difficult applications where their technology really has an edge," Sibson said.
HEAVY, VULNERABLE
Industry professionals say for some projects traditional steel pipes are too heavy and vulnerable to corrosion.
This can have severe consequences. French oil company Total recently said last year's leak at the Elgin field in the North Sea was caused by corrosion weakening the pipes which were then broken by high pressure.
Magma produces a pipe made out of a carbon fibre and PEEK polymer composite, which is the highest-end pipe in the industry, according to commercial director Stephen Hatton.
"It doesn't corrode at all. It hardly ages in our terms, maybe in a hundred years or so, and has a very low fatigue sensitivity," Hatton told Reuters.
But the pipe is expensive. Hatton declined to give exact prices, but said it was competitive with the steel flexibles produced by Technip and NKT.
Across the North Sea, Airborne share the same concept but think Magma have gone too high-end. Airborne uses glass fibre and a variety of plastics to produce a slightly cheaper more flexible pipe.
"We have a staircase approach where we take small steps starting with simpler applications that are not so risky," said Martin van Onna, Airborne's commercial director for oil and gas.
The ultimate goal for both companies is the production of risers, the pipe that connects the drilling platform to the oil well. Composite pipes should be ideal for this use, but it remains difficult to persuade oil companies to go with the technology for the first time.
The biggest issue is developing an industry standard. In this way Magma and Airborne are partners.
The two companies have come together to commission independent research to give them recommended practice. The results will be out this June.
"In some ways we are competing but we are also helping each other. The signal we are sending out into the industry is that there are more companies that fundamentally believe this is the right technology," Van Onna said.
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