EVI Oiltools (Canada), after various acquisitions and mergers, is now under the Weatherford group of companies. EVI Oil Tools was an OEM of PC pumps, driveheads, and Corod rod string. An example of Corod rod string and a PC pump drive head is shown below.

 

They also had a sizable field service operation to support the equipment sold. Since Corod was unique in the industry, they had proprietary field service equipment to support Corod, essentially creating a captive market.

 

A Corod service rig and a flash butt welding truck are shown above. Both vehicles are examples of the proprietary Corod field service fleet that made that division successful.

Torque Limiter M1 - One of the principle reasons I was hired at EVI Oil Tools was to develop a product that would provide high torque shut down for PC pumps. The requirements were scaled back to developing a product for drive heads that used an electric prime mover. The end result was the Torque Limiter M1 control product.

Northlander data logger prototype - The Northlander was EVI's packaged VFD product. The product was customized to a certain degree to operate a PC pump relatively satisfactory, however it lacked critical functions such as data logging and a true pump off control strategy. The Northlander data logger prototype was a device that logged speed and torque of the VFD and was able to transfer this information to a laptop for further analysis. Seen below on the on the 3rd VFD from the left is the prototype Northlander data logger prototype under going field evaluation.

While the test were relatively successful, a corporate merger with a company making a similar product ended the development of this product.

PC Pump natural gas dewatering experiments. - In this project a PC pump was used to dewater a natural gas well. Many natural gas wells, as they approach the end of their useful life, do not have enough flow and/or pressure to lift the water that collects at the entrance of the well. Thus, dewatering a natural gas well allows recovery of the low pressure gas remaining in the reservoir. However, due to marginal economic consideration, the process of removing the water must be done at very low cost.

In this project we used a small economical PC pump to remove the water. Since PC pumps will not tolerate being run completely dry for any significant length of time, a control device was required to sense when the pump ran out of water. Two variations of this project were carried out: Pumping water to a surface tank, and re-injecting it into a different zone (which solves the water disposal problem, but complicates the detection of no water in the pump). Through significant amounts of data acquisition and a number of test trials it was shown that it is entirely possible to detect a no water condition using only surface measurements when the pump was moving the water to a different zone.

Since natural gas well in many cases are not electrified, a generator was necessary in this case to run the 3 hp electric drive head as well as the control box. Some of the equipment used in the field for this experimental project can be seen below.

Field conditions were far from ideal and added an extra layer of difficulties in performing the experiments and developing the appropriate control strategy. However, most of the equipment used had a history of performing in rough conditions and we were able to complete the experiment with only a few minor problems.

Experimental Data Logger for monitoring RTD Ltd. equipment - EVI was considering the purchase of a company that made unique down hole pressure sensors. The sensors were part of an electronics package that used low frequency telemetry to transmit the measured values back to the surface. In order to correlate some of the RTD measurements, an experimental data logger was built from a modified Torque Limiter M1 controller and a number of sensors. I made the modifications to both the firmware and hardware of the controller to meet the data acquisition requirements. The end result in this experiment was a general agreement between the RTD equipment and the experimental data logger.

Misc. projects & tasks - Other miscellaneous, but significant projects worthy of mention include:

• Installed first functional computer network in Corod for the Engineering department.
• Performed diagnostics on flash butt welding trucks: This was a small project involving analyzing the current draw profile during the welding process to troubleshoot why the welding truck was incapable of quality welds when everything appeared to be OK.
• Training field personnel
• Produced reports for customers and government tax credits (SRED).

While these tasks deviated considerably from my main job duties, they were very interesting and did not interfere with my core resposibilities.

Working for EVI Oiltools was excellent introduction to OEM oilfield equipment company.