Pact All Electric - One Step Closer to Autonomy
Authors: Petersen Christian , Strand Ola , Johansen Espen Sten , Hansen Dag Almar , Fredheim Dag Ketil , Ohlckers Per 
Published: December 2021

E&P companies are increasingly challenged with cost-effective development or upgrade of remote fields, ensuring crew safety and regulatory requirements for reducing environmental impact. Remote operations and unmanned platforms have significantly lower CO2 emissions and lowerCAPEX and OPEX in areas of sparse infrastructure. Complete electrification of safety critical control systems is key to maintain safe production while digitization, automation and condition based maintenance reduce required on-site personnel.

An all-electric wellhead- and production tree valve actuator for handling emergency situations has been developed under a Joint Industry Project by Equinor, Baker Hughes and TECHNI. PACT utilize a completely new, patent pending failsafe mechanism that is inherently safe without requirement for redundancy. PACT contains an embedded controller and sensors with extremely low power consumption rendering it well suited for solar/alternate power sources. A new super-capacitor is under development in partnership with the University of Southeast Norway, that in combination with the fastest failsafe mechanism ever ensure safety in all modes of operation, even with all lines down or consumed by flames.

Electric actuators offer significant CAPEX savings over hydraulic actuators by eliminating costly hydraulic control systems and hydraulic lines as well as saving space and weight. Overall system cost is significantly lower than hydraulic systems (Equinor estimates at around USD 2million per well for an unmanned platform) while also reducing emissions and environmental impact. Globally, there are approximately 7000 offshore platforms of which 1600 are unmanned (200 in the Middle East). The existing population of unmanned platforms is undergoing continual upgrades and there are significant cost savings by using the PACT as a drop-in replacement for existing hydraulic systems, while enabling fully digitized, remote control and autonomous operations. Low power consumption, weight and a small footprint renders it equally suited for land wells, including retrofit upgrades without reinforcing infrastructure. PACT is designed to be an integral part of automated and remote-control systems and the modular technology is also being adopted for subsea trees, as well as other mission critical pressure control applications. Given the significant benefits in simplifying operations and reducing cost while improving HSSE, leading E&P companies including Equinor, Total, Aker BP and others have chosen electric operations as future technology platform for both topside and subsea operations.

Embedded force-, pressure-, temperature- and vibration sensors enable data-driven, fact- and condition based maintenance. Aggregating real-time and historical data, component- and system models ensures fully remote/autonomous operation with a digital twin. The novel failsafe-mechanism fronts the most reliable action of all times while the patent pending solution ensures closing times down to 1 second. In 2020 the consortium was awarded USD 950 000 in government support funding and in May 2021 PACT won OTC Spotlight on New Technology award.

The paper aims to show how the technology works and underline why it will take a place in the future of well control and production.