Establishing oil wells in the Middle East requires a large investment in time, equipment, and money. Petroleum-producing companies that hire service companies to get their wells established set high performance standards, demanding zero error and consistent, high levels of success.
When one oil driller needed special equipment – a robust, redundant cementing skid – it turned to Sanjel Corporation, a specialised energy service company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Sanjel designed and manufactured a cementing skid utilising new SCM (Sanjel Cyclonic Mixer) cement mixing technology. In six short months Sanjel produced a working unit by adapting an aggressive design stance and SolidWorks 3D CAD software.
“Our designers and the fabrication team collaborated in real time around SolidWorks 3D CAD models,” said Kris Sato, senior mechanical designer at Sanjel Corporation. “This helped us deliver quickly on an important product that could easily have taken two years to build. SolidWorks software gave everyone involved a clear picture of what we were working on and working toward. SolidWorks kept us moving fast.”
The SCM skid provides cementing services for oil wells. This includes:
- Performing primary cementing tasks, such as cementing the steel casing in the well
- Remedial cementing, like cement squeezes where a target zone in the oil well’s column is slated for production
- Executing well kills to keep the pressure of the formation fluids from entering the well bore.
These jobs are sensitive and critical and an equipment failure can lead to delays in petroleum production or severe damage to the oil well.
Sanjel's SCM skid is a self-contained mobile unit that can be transported on a large winch truck from site to site over unpaved desert roads or on the back of a low-boy trailer on a paved highway.
Sanjel used SolidWorks Simulation software in developing the custom cementing unit to ensure it was rugged enough to withstand being loaded up onto the back of a winch truck, being lifted onto a cargo ship by crane. The cementing unit would also need to sustain impacts from vehicles and machinery and endure conditions commonly encountered in oilfields.
Sanjel also used SolidWorks Flow Simulation software that helped to ensure the cement slurry flowed smoothly through the unit's piping, which included T's, elbows, valves, and other fittings. Any "dead zones" would allow settling of the slurry, creating a plug in the piping and affecting the operation of the unit.
Design engineers used SolidWorks eDrawings® email-enabled design communication software to help visualisation, understanding and evaluation of the design of the cementing skid. The sheet metal package in SolidWorks allowed designers to provide welders with quick and accurate pipe templates for various copes found at piping joints within minutes. It would have taken them about an hour to generate each one by hand.
SolidWorks 3D CAD and simulation software is available from Solidtec Solutions