Interventek Powers Up Subsea Safety Valve Technology

Interventek has announced the development of the industry’s first subsea shear-and-seal safety valve powered by an integrated gas accumulator.

This innovation builds on Interventek’s existing, award-winning, Revolution valve technology by adding a gas accumulator within the valve, close to the cutting and sealing mechanism. It increases the power and speed of the valve’s functionality and provides a failsafe mode triggered in the event of an emergency.

The new integrated gas accumulator valve, called the Revolution PowerPlus, provides a versatile and compact, but highly critical safety barrier within the BOP (and below the primary shear rams) during subsea well completion or intervention operations. The valve will rapidly cut any intervention media such as slickline, braided electric cable, coiled tubing or coiled tubing with braided electric cable and seal the wellbore, containing pressure and allowing the intervention vessel to disconnect should the need arise.

The increased closing speed of less than one second, achieved by the PowerPlus valve, is particularly important during gas production as this minimises the quantity of escaping gas. Traditional safety valves operate at much slower rates and mainly rely on hydraulic fluid with a power source located further away from the cutting and sealing mechanism, typically above the BOP shear rams.

The first prototype 63/8”15,000psi working pressure, in-riser landing string model of the Revolution PowerPlus has already been developed and is currently undergoing cutting and sealing qualification tests. It will be rated to cut coiled tubing, braided cable and slickline with an automatic, fail-safe close mechanism, easily operated via existing control systems.

The core technology in Interventek’s original, award-winning Revolution Valve is fundamentally different to other shear-and-seal valves. It separates its cutting and sealing elements, so intervention media can be cut without interfering with the sealing surfaces. It is thus more reliable and can cut and seal in a single device, unlike traditional dual ball valve arrangements. The valve uses resilient primary sealing rather than elastomer components, which enables safe well intervention under more challenging conditions eg. large wellbore, deep water or HPHT scenarios. It is further differentiated due to its ultra-compact nature with external rotary actuators. This allows the valve to be installed below the shear rams on small BOP’s and means that operators do not need to rely on the shear rams as a principle line of defence, which are much more difficult and costly to remediate after activation.

The original 15,000 psi working pressure in-riser landing string Revolution valve is field proven having been successfully developed, tested and commercialised over a number of years and is currently in operation in the Gulf of Mexico. Interventek have also developed the world’s first 20K rated in-riser shear and seal safety valve.

“Building on the success of our core valve technology we are very keen to push the design envelope further and deliver additional, enabling benefits to industry,” Gavin Cowie, managing director explained.

“The speed of closure we have achieved with our PowerPlus valve is unprecedented and provides significant safety advantages for operators. Incorporating the power source within the valve is only possible due to the original Revolution Valve design being extremely efficient, with the cutting and sealing mechanisms contained within a confined space. We believe this places our technology far ahead of the market in both performance and reliability, but also, due to our novel design, operators can take advantage of these benefits for around half the cost of other solutions.”

In addition to in-riser landing string applications, the Revolution valve can be configured for many other uses. These include surface intervention, open water lightweight intervention and lightweight abandonment.

For more information on the Revolution valve, the PowerPlus functionality and the valve’s numerous subsea well control features, applications and benefits visit www.interventek.com