Estevan– When it comes to pipelines, the southeast Saskatchewan oilpatch has one of the highest concentrations of fiberglass pipelines in the world according to Chris Davidson, regional manager and fiberglass piping systems specialist for TS&M Supply Fiberglass, based in Estevan.
The supply company has fiberglass products at several of its locations, including Estevan, Virden, Man., Redcliff and Provost, Alta, and now one in the U.S.
“We just opened one in Williston,” he said, heart of North Dakota’s Bakken oil play.
In 2015 the Estevan location moved into its new, permanent home, after several years of moving around and expanding within the TS&M compound on Kensington Avenue.
The layout of the new shop allows for drive-thru, indoor service. Trucks pulling their 35-foot range trailers can pull in, make returns of unused product, and pickup up new supplies for the next job all in a well-lit, climate controlled environment. The fiberglass stock such as pups, fittings, valves and consumables are all stored within the first few rows of warehouse shelving adjacent to the drive-thru. There’s an order desk on the floor near the drive-thru, and a separate office area behind it, meaning that the fiberglass division has its own dedicated office area apart from the other TS&M operations.
“We have way more room here. We now have our own area dedicated to our fiberglass division. This is head office for our company,” Davidson said.
Fiberspar
In December TS&M became the exclusive Canadian distributor for Fiberspar, a spoolable pipe company with its own location in Estevan. TS&M will be expanding its operations to include the Fiberspar building and yard on the east side of Estevan.
“This is big,” said Davidson.
The addition of the Fiberspar products will broaden what TS&M has to offer our customers for composite pipelines.
Centron/Star Super Seal fiberglass products
The primary product of TS&M Supply Fiberglass is their fiberglass pipe used for flowlines, injection lines and other pipelines.
“We now offer 2-inch through 14-inch,” Davidson said.
NOV Fiberglass Systems bought the Centron plant in 2011 – our main supplier of fiberglass pipe. The Texas plant is relocating and being consolidated, he explained. “Now all our products are moving to Wichita, Kansas, to be branded as Star Super Seal.”
Centron’s product was a well-known brownish-red colour – now it will become a yellowish green.
Due to the market they have had to make choices to consolidate, Davidson explained. They feel that they have more research and development and capacity from this plant. They want to keep the SP & SPH threads but want to market all of their fiberglass pipe under the Star brand. The threads will be kept under their Super seal pipe brand because that’s their O-ring product line.
The threads and pipe will be compatible with what they have today. NOV Fiberglass Systems currently uses the O-ring connections to achieve the highest pressure and diameter and that’s why anything over eight inch is an O-ring product - up to 3000 pounds per square inch can be acheived.
“Southeast Saskatchewan is one of the biggest consumers of fiberglass,” Davidson said, referring to fiberglass pipe.
Why is that?
Corrosion is the number one reason, he explained.
“Ask any of the rig guys about their rods,” Davidson said, adding that the local oil, with its high H2S content, is hard on steel.
“This Bakken fluid has changed a lot,” he said, adding it’s very, very corrosive.
(That ties in with what Pipeline News has seen in other sectors such as fluid haulers, whose fleets of aluminum tanker trucks are being eaten up like Swiss cheese. As a result, the largest fluid-hauling trucking companies in recent years have all set up their own tanker trailer repair shops.)
Davidson said in years past, everything was tried, but companies started to go back to fiberglass. They found that fiberglass put into the field long ago had no issues.
The Waskada field in southwest Manitoba, just north of the U.S. border, used to be all steel, he noted, but is getting changed to fiberglass.
By hand
Fiberglass pipelines are largely assembled by hand. It is light enough in most sizes that it can be carried and manipulated by workers without the need for heavy equipment. A typical three-inch/1000 pounds per square inch joint weighs 70 pounds and can be carried by one man.
While the pipe comes into their yards by semi, it is usually goes out to the field on 36-foot trailers pulled by local crew trucks.
Threads are spun in by hand, and tightened by pipe wrenches, as opposed to welding of steel or fusing of poly pipe.
Not requiring welding is a major advantage, as welders are an expensive line item on a budget.
Crews will usually pick up pipe and supplies as they go. It’s common to see them pick up 1,000 metres at a time.
The typical application of flowlines has changed in recent years. Davidson noted, “We used to pipeline into a header. Now it’s a group and test system.”
That’s where there are typically two lines, a larger group line and a secondary test line, that run parallel in the ditch. If the field is to be developed into a waterflood, then a third line for an injector will also run in the same ditch. That will typically be a high-pressure line.
This design allows multiple wells to flow into the one group line. When individual wells need to be tested, they can be isolated and run on the test line.
Other products
TS&M Supply also offers downhole solutions. These include injection strings for disposal wells, scab liners to repair a casing leak, tail strings and production tubing.
There’s some wariness out there about running a rod string through fiberglass tubing, Davidson noted, but he suggests companies try it out. “If you can’t keep a steel string, why wouldn’t you try it (fiberglass)?” he said.
“We do facility piping as well. All the piping between tanks is generally fiberglass,” he said.
Bondstrand is another NOV FGS-branded product, designed for low pressure applications such as vapour recovery unit lines, flare lines and suction lines. The Bondstrand product has tapered and bonded connections.
Service
“We have field technicians. In Estevan alone we have six field hands to help with all applications 24/7. Nobody offers that but us,” Davidson said.
“We hire technicians who have several years’ experience installing fiberglass pipe. Our guys are there to help and support the product 100 per cent. The last thing I want to see is a customer having an issue. Our Canadian fiberglass division has over 300 years of combined oilfield field experience.
“We’ve got good contractors here. But there are always new guys coming into the oilfield with little or no fiberglass experience.”
Some things to watch for are being careful not to bruise the pipe with a rocks while backfilling, over torqueing and watching maximum bend radius for instance.
To that end, TS&M offers courses and complete certifications on the installation of their fiberglass products.
Activity
The Estevan fiberglass location currently has 11 staff members.
Is there some motivation to get pipelines in the ground to forego more-expensive trucking, especially when times are tight? Davidson thinks so. “Oil companies still need to keep people working. Pipelining makes sense to me. Trucking is expensive.”
“Things are slower than they have been,” Davidson said. “Compared to other areas, we’re very fortunate that some of the customers we work for have been able to keep busy.”
