By Dr. Mohamed Ali
General Manager
Advanced Technology Organization

Last year, when VetcoGray joined the GE family, I think some people may not have seen the true significance of where we envisioned the technology synergy of our combined companies going. But a lot of eyes have opened much wider in the past eight months. Now, I look at the technology synergies we’re creating and am, quite honestly, impressed by the pace and scope.

Take a moment to consider how much VetcoGray knows about oil field completion, drilling, and subsea production,. Now consider that compression, power generation and pumping have long been core strengths of GE’s Oil & Gas business. Put the two together, and we’ve got something very special to work with. And that’s just one synergy area.

One real practical example is a new multi-phase pump technology program that we launched in 2007 and are accelerating significantly in 2008. This pump will have 2-3 times more pressure boosting capability than any on the market now. One of these new ultra-high-pressure pumps can replace several of today’s pumps in long distance tie-back applications. Learning from our own and the industry’s experience with subsea pumps, this new technology eliminates the root causes of failure of today’s pumps, thereby ensuring un-interrupted operations under the most extreme fluctuations in gas volume fraction and water content of today’s and tomorrow’s complex reservoirs. The pump also saves on umbilical costs, which enables our customers to develop long distance tie-back fields in a cost effective manner. Alone, it would have been difficult for either business to develop the technology to this level of performance. But together, we’ve taken it from brainstorm to prototype in less than a year. That’s incredible progress. As always, our customers are involved in the development process and we are in discussions regarding potential subsea and onshore launch sites for this technology.

Another synergy is in the area of materials. We are merging our experiences, best practices, and knowledge of stress corrosion cracking and material testing and processing to create the industry’s deepest and most capable materials team to meet the challenges posed by the rising levels of sour and acid gas in oil and gas fields. We have launched a composite riser program that draws on GE’s comprehensive knowledge of composites and VetcoGray’s vast riser experience. In fact, this program’s team includes many of the experts who participated in the creation of GE’s jet engine composite fan blades, together with the most experienced riser designers in the industry. There will be no time wasted in trials-and-errors or in learning the material properties of composites or the design envelopes of risers. Instead, by leveraging our combined strengths we are able to bring proven solutions to our customers, faster..

As important as the synergies themselves is the way in which we are creating them:
We developed a culture without boundaries in which there is one advanced technology team with a mission to be the most trustworthy technology organization in the industry.
A few days ago, as I was reviewing our composite riser program, the VetcoGray project leader said, “I feel that VetcoGray has acquired GE.” This is the culture we are fostering and rewarding - a culture in which our people are endlessly searching for ideas that stand or fall on their merits, rather than on the origin of the idea or the position of the originator. It is a culture in which GE’s size and global reach are utilized to take those ideas to the finish line.
We are successfully creating a dynamic where 1 + 1 =3 catapulting our company’s capabilities. It is more than just finite synergy opportunities in subsea development, more like charting a course into a sea of unlimited potential.

There are many more technology developments that we are proud of. We have successfully passed key milestones in the development of another high-speed integrated motor-compressor. ICL Phase 1 was introduced last year for sweet gas applications and was extremely well received by the industry. Now, ICL Phase 2 is taking the technology a step further for sour and acid gas applications. Phase 2 ICL offers many unique technology features: use of a permanent magnet rotor to enable unprecedented robustness and the ability to reliably and safely handle wet sour and acid gas without barrier seals. We have just successfully completed two key milestones in the technology qualification. First, spinning the rotor at a speed close to 20,000 rpm to prove its robustness - we believe this is the highest speed ever achieved by a permanent magnet machine of this size and rating. Second, working with key suppliers, we have successfully installed a NACE-compliant magnetic bearing that is now operating on sour gas at a customer site. The bearing employs some key GE materials and processing technologies and its successful qualification and installation is an important milestone in the development of a hermetically sealed sour and acid gas motor-compressor.

Ecomagination is a key initiative in GE reflecting our commitment to innovative solutions that reduce the environmental footprint of our customers’ operations and simultaneously create significant added value. As far as we are concerned “green is green,“ meaning green technologies can and should make money. Today’s oil and gas facilities produce waste heat that largely goes into chimneys. We are developing a new line of products to economically convert waste heat into electrical power based on the “Organic Rankine Cycle”. This results in power and efficiency increases and CO2 emissions reductions, without compromising operational flexibility.

We constantly review our technology development portfolio to ensure our investments are aligned with our customers’ needs. Our technology sessions with our customers are critical to this process. We take each customer challenge seriously and many of the above programs resulted from these deep exchanges. Technology sessions are not single annual events. We are continually working with our customers to ensure that our ideas make practical sense in the field. Now, that notion of field is truly all encompassing as we take GE’s technology development processes further on-and offshore, and deeper into the subsea world.