High-Capacity and High-Fatigue Tubular Forgings for Energy Industry

ABSTRACT Energy industry is searching for thick-wall tubulars, often beyond the fabrication capacity of traditional pipe mills, focused only on large volume production for Oil & Gas Industry. The order of thick-walled tubulars is commonly of very few pieces. So, forged tubulars can be the answer. The design is performed by Customer. Then, the manufacturer shall be qualified, to prove the ability to fabricate the specified thick-walled tubular, under the high-quality standards that can be found in modern pipe mills. The performance of the forged tubular, during installation and in service, is clearly linked to the design choices. Size and steel contribute to provide the required high strength, weldability as well, and sometimes corrosion resistance, in presence of aggressive flow conditions. Therefore, the quality of fabrication is a factor. There are examples of satisfactory performance in different applications: buckle arrestors for deep water laying; high-strength capacity casings for drilling operations; stress joints for different pipe-riser applications; actuators for motion compensation in offshore operations; large jacking for special lifting; actuators for renewable energy. In this paper, a few experiences of energy industry are described. The scope is to introduce the supply chain and project management that backs the satisfactory manufacture of tubular forgings. The fabrication is quite challenging, on one hand because of size and material and high quality as well, on the other the stringent deadlines and logistics, that often implies different locations for each phase of the fabrication, i.e. steel making, forging, machining, welding.