Advantage - Calgary design firm's innovative solutions work to your advantage - Thinking outside the box

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Advantage Products Inc. helps oil and gas companies increase efficiency, enhance safety and benefit the bottom line, with reliable, cost-effective solutions to everyday problems.

President and CEO, Jim Weber, has been involved in developing innovative solutions for the energy industry since 1986. He established Advantage Products Inc. (API) in November, 1997 together with Engineering Consultant, Lynn Tessier.

Early on, Weber and Tessier decided that API would not only develop new products, it would also take them from proof of concept, right through to manufacturing and marketing. "We do not produce anything we have not designed, manufactured and marketed ourselves," Weber says. The API motto, 'Thinking Outside the Box,' is a vision the entire API Innovation Team lives by.

Headquartered in Calgary, API has developed a wide range of innovative solutions for the oil and gas industry worldwide. Here are three of the most well known:

TorqStopperT

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The TorqStopperT - API's first commercial product - prevents rotation of the tubing string in a cased wellbore with progressive cavity pumps. "To date, we have approximately 30,000 of these units in service all over the world and our failure rate is almost non-existent," Weber says. "It is the lowest failure rate in the industry by far."

Robust and simply designed, the TorqStopper has been hugely successful, cornering approximately 85-90 per cent of the market in Canada, 70 per cent in the U.S. and 60-70 per cent in Latin America in just five years. API also sells the TorqStopper overseas, in Australia, Russia and several former Soviet republics. SideWinderT Wellhead

[Figure 3] API developed the SideWinderT, a side entry wellhead, to allow for remedial work such as introducing coiled tubing, or cable equipment for telemetry, into the well. "The big advantage of this product is that it allows the operator to introduce equipment into the wellbore without shutting the well down or having to pull tubing out of the well," Weber explains.

TorqDriveT

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API's newest, most exciting development is the TorqDriveT, a progressive cavity pump top drive unit. The TorqDriveT has seen "incredible technical success," Weber says. "It is a radically new concept in electric motor design. This motor is a quantum leap in motor design. We believe it will revolutionize the industry."

The most common type of electric motor is an induction motor, which runs most efficiently at its designed running speed. Although users can vary the induction motor's speed with a variable frequency drives, they have very limited turndown or speed adjustment capability.

In comparison, the TorqDriveT is designed to operate at high efficiency and rated torque over the full speed range from 30 - 450 rpm. There are no induction motors in existence that can achieve this kind of speed turndown without having to change belts or gear ratios.

API's motor is direct drive, no gear, no belts, no sheaves. Every other drive on the market that Weber is aware of, is either gear-driven or belt-driven and in most cases uses both. Rated at 1,000 foot pounds of torque, API's motor can achieve much higher breakout torque without difficulty. "The motor is very controllable with pre-set limits - wherever the operator decides to pre-set the limits."

The TorqDriveT is proving itself to be an extremely reliable performer, and has achieved 97.4 per cent efficiency, line to polish rod. "No one else has been able to come close to that."

For example, one of API's motors has been out on a wellsite since Nov. 17, 2009. In that field, the operator must typically change the drivehead speed anywhere from five to seven times before the speed is optimized. With all other drive heads, this requires shutting the well down and getting a crew out on site to re-gear the drive head. But with API's drivehead, the speed has been changed many times since the motor was installed. "It's a simple matter of changing the speed setting on the control panel to adjust the speed on our drivehead. The torque and efficiency is maintained throughout all rpms," Weber says.

In addition, in the event of sudden power loss, which can occur for a variety of reasons, the API TorqDrive has a built in automatic regenerative braking system. Whenever the unit goes into backspin, the motor automatically converts to generator mode and the energy generated is dissipated in braking resistors in the control panel. In the rare event this automatic braking system is disabled for some reason, the motor is capable of spinning backwards at up to 5,000 rpm with no damage and in complete safety, Weber says. "The TorqDriveT is inherently safe."

With six months of trouble-free operation on the first field trial unit, Weber expects the TorqDriveT will be out on the market by July.

Currently, API has a number of other products under development.

STAY TUNED

Contact for more information

Jim Weber, President and CEO
Advantage Products Inc.
T: (403) 264-1647 Toll-free North America-wide: 1 877 255.2002
F: (403) 263-2369
E: jweber@advantageproductsinc.com
W: www.advantageproductsinc.com