Engineering Precision Provides Access to Gas in Azerbaijan

One of the biggest BEL Valves orders to date was made on behalf of an oil operator working in the Caspian Sea. The development has the capacity to produce approximately 50,000 barrels of gas per day.

The gas produced from the development will travel 3,500 kilometers over many countries, to a height of over 2,500 meters, and up to 600 meters below the sea. With this in mind, over 450 valves were designed, manufactured and tested by BEL Valves to the most extreme pressures and temperatures. The valves, ranging from two to 10 inches in bore diameter were manufactured for subsea installation. Furthermore, valves ranging from two to 32 inches in bore diameter were manufactured for topside installation on to oil platforms and refineries.

The 10” subsea valve, weighed 18 tonnes and was the most critical valve within the whole development due to this being a HIPPS valve, which must close on demand to protect all of the equipment downstream from over pressurisation.

This valve was designed and tested by BEL Valves to withstand pressures of up to 13,000psi and temperatures from 0°c to 100°c at up to 900m below sea level. This particular valve takes less than 15 seconds to close (which is actually very fast considering the size of the valve and the deep sea water pressure).

BEL Valves hyperbaric testing simulates the environment of subsea depths up to 3,000m. This means all manufactured valves can be tested to make sure they are suitable for the subsea environment. During the hyperbaric test, cyclic testing can also be conducted verifying that the testing is of no consequence to the valve.

All of BEL Valves’ deep water technologies have a strong focus on safety and reliability, which is vital in high pressure and high temperature environments.