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The international ‘wear and fusion technology’ leader, Castolin Eutectic, has been active in the oil and gas exploration industry from its early beginnings. In 2006, Castolin Eutectic celebrated its 100 years of continuous service to customers around the world, assisting with severe wear and joining problems. Today the group is active in over 100 countries, has ten global development and manufacturing sites and nearly 1,000 direct technical sales engineers every day in the field.

In the oil and gas exploration and production fields, we have principle activities in Canada, USA, Scotland, Norway and the Middle East, co-ordinated through our OilTec industry team. This team is active with customers in improving the life and performance of exploration equipment. It does this through the development of new and innovative materials and processes, and sharing best practices. Process technologies involved include:

Plasma transferred arc
High-velocity oxy fuel thermal spraying
Weld overlay
Brazing rope overlay
Tungsten carbide wearfacing
Twin-arc wire thermal spraying
Self fluxing, low temperature, gas-atomised powder spraying

These processes and their tailored consumables are developed and made available by Castolin Eutectic. In addition to supplying consumables and process equipment to the industry, we also provide the service.

Offshore drilling, with today’s advanced technology, allows a larger amount of the drilling to be done in the same well. Although this gives cost and logistic advantages it also greatly increasing wear on the drilling equipment and the well. There is a general increase in demand to find more efficient solutions to extend equipment lifetime.

We have considerable experience in extending the life of the stabiliser, hard-banding, kicker plates, non-magnetic components, pumps, shafts, bearings, etc.

The group has recently made several major investments that support our OilTec activities, including a new ‘green field’ state-of-the-art wire and powder production plant in Ireland, with full consumable development and testing capabilities. Our R&D facilities now also include hard-banding wear simulation test equipment. The plant has developed and launched a range of new products specifically for the oil industry, which include OTW 12 hard-banding wire, and OTP 5 and non-magnetic wear-facing powder.

Another major investment in 2007 has been the purchase of Trio AF Teknikk, in Stavanger, Norway, by Castolin Scandinavia. Trio AF is a very strong partner for maintenance and repair services in the offshore industry with core competences including stabiliser refurbishment, hard-banding of drill collars, hard-facing of diverse downhole assembly equipment and production of OEM parts subjected to severe wear.

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