Vallourec aims to innovate constantly to meet its clients’ demands for tubular solutions for challenging oil & gas market projects. For the past two years, its teams in France, Germany, and Brazil have pooled their expertise and resources to tackle a key challenge: the development of a high strength, corrosion-resistant X80 steel grade for application in deep water sour conditions.
The One X80 project originally grew from a demand from one of Vallourec’s clients. The last few years have seen an increased focus on ultra-deep water fields on the one hand, and increased efficiency on the other. This has led oil and gas companies to demand cost-effective new solutions able to resist “sourâ€? conditions – environments in which hydrogen sulfide (H2S) can lead to the pipeline failure.
The high strength, low alloy X80 grade developed by Vallourec enables the use of lighter pipelines in ultra-deep waters, reducing consequently the installation costs.
The whole idea behind the One X80 project was to ensure that clients get exactly similar mechanical and corrosion properties from a tube ordered from Brazil as well as a tube ordered from Germany.
