Vallourec delivers the first Intelligent Drift service to one of the largest international Oil and Gas operators present in Brazil.

In the context of well drilling and oil production operations, the accuracy of information related to tubes is an essential element to reduce the risk of failures in the casing, cementing and production stages. For this reason, Vallourec developed the Intelligent Drift Solution (IDS), a solution that provides data analysis services to increase the reliability of operations.

Portable and easy to handle, the device is designed to measure length and internal diameter (ID) while drifting along the full length of the pipe. It is the first time that this service is offered in Brazil. The IDS activities can be carried out in any pipe handling operation, provided the pipes are set on a horizontal inspection bench. A laptop with proprietary software processes the data in real time and no other special devices are needed.

The use of a conventional Drift can only validate the ID dimensions of the tubes in production, through a “pass/fail” inspection. In contrast, the Intelligent Drift performs a direct measurement and provides actual length and internal diameter (ID) data for the full length of the pipe.

Among its applications, the possibility of choosing the best ID profiles for setting of the packer installation and, in this pilot application of the solution, we observed that the inspection service with the IDS was successfully performed at the client. The final objective of delivering the report considering the best tubes from the ID mapping for setting the packer was reached. The final report, delivered by the VAM Field Service^® team, points out that the service level was met with very satisfactory tube selection results.