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Why do we share our hard-earned knowledge?
We want to benefit future generations of oil and gas professionals.
The oilfield is a boom-and-bust industry, resulting in a labor force with large age-gaps, and thus large experience-gaps and knowledge-gaps.
OCTG Buyers Guide is written by supply chain veterans who learned their trade the old way – in the field, in the office, on the plant floor, from oral tradition, and most importantly from personal experience. There are no handbooks for what you will find on this site.
Casing and Tubing
What is OCTG?
OCTG refers to casing and tubing – the steel pipe used on an oil rig and in an oil well.
Casing:
Casing holds the hole open so you can continue drilling deeper, and protect zones like freshwater aquifers. It is installed telescopically, and vertically into the earth. Casing is also used to protect the open hole and allow oil and gas operators to install completions equipment to produce oil. The most common casing sizes are 4-1/2” – 13-3/8” OD pipe. Any size pipe can act as casing, as the term casing more explains what the pipe is being used for.
Tubing:
Tubing is steel pipe that helps produce fluids from beneath the surface to above the ground, or inject fluids from above to below. The most common tubing sizes are 2-3/8”, 2-7/8”, and 3-1/2”. Any size pipe can be tubing, because tubing explains what task the pipe is performing. Salt dome storage facilities use pipe as big as 16” to inject fluids into the ground. Who knew 16” could be tubing!
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Get answers on anything OCTG.
Inspection is performed at the steel mill upon manufacturing of pipes. Inspection can be performed again if the pipe has been sitting a long time, or to requalify used pipe.
When you hear the term “Inspection” in OCTG, it is almost always referring to a tube-inspection. The most common tube-inspection is called an Electro-Magnetic Inspection, or “EMI.” The next most common is called a FLUT inspection.
The banding system refers to the maximum allowable wall loss from nominal wall. For example, “white band” usually allows 12.5% wall loss. For example, 2-3/8” 0.190” wall can have wall loss / defects as deep as (0.125” * 0.190”) = 0.02375” deep. White band is usually considered a “new pipe spec.” Other band categories are reserved for used pipe markets.
- -White Band – allows up to 12.5% wall loss / defect depth from nominal wall
- -Yellow Band – allows up to 15% wall loss / defect depth from nominal wall
- -Blue Band – allows up to 30% wall loss / defect depth from nominal wall
- -Orange Band – allows up to 35% wall loss / defect depth from nominal wall *Proprietary to Coastal Pipe of Louisiana
- -Green Band – allows up to 50% wall loss / defect depth from nominal wall
- -Red Band – above 50% wall loss / defect depth from nominal. Considered junk.
Bands are determined by how pipe passed an EMI inspection. When you refer to used tubing by its “banded” name (EG – “yellow band”) you are referring to the type of EMI-tube-inspection performed on the pipe. It is important to note: just because you are buying “XXXX-band” pipe, it does not mean your pipe is “rig-ready” for downhole use. Used pipe only defined by a band does not always mean it has received additional necessary services for requalification downhole.
For example, if you buy “yellow band pipe”, all that means is the pipe received an EMI inspection on the tube. It does not guarantee the threads have been visualled, nor it does not mean the pipe has been drifted or hydrotested. It does not even mean the pipe has passed a 0-15% inspection. Some pipe yards consider yellow band as a 0-18% inspection. The lesson here is to get in writing an offer from your pipe dealer, and only work with trusted and pedigreed dealers, preferably with assets like inventory and pipe yards.
Learn from the most experienced professionals in the industry.
What are the types of OCTG inspections?
There are many ways EMI inspectors arrive at finding defects/wall loss/flaws, and how they interpret the manual prove-ups and relate them to the banding-standard. Therefore, having an experienced EMI inspector/operator is crucial. If you need a more proper explanation of OCTG inspection – please reach out to www.macco.com. We have visited their facility and with their management team – a top notch crew.
Know MoreHow do you inspect used OCTG pipe?
- What do I do with my used pipe? Your well had a leak, maybe you changed string design, maybe it was a P&A. You know the pipe has seen its better days, but you want to see if it has more good days in front of it. Take a moment and read “What is OCTG inspections?” and “What are the types of OCTG inspections?”. You will need to know the acronyms and definitions to understand this next section. Here are inspection procedures you can perform on used pipe, ranked from most thorough to least thorough.
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