HEIDENHEIM, Germany, March 21, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- America's growing dependence on imported oil is a problem that shows no signs of abating anytime soon. Conservation, of course, will help by reducing demand, but conservation measures can be taken only so far without seriously impacting the nation's economy. Equally important in the coming years will be the use of new technology to extract more oil from existing wells and new reservoirs on our own territory.
Today the United States has about 22 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, more than 80-percent of which is found in just four states, Alaska, California, Texas, and Louisiana. That number is down about 17-percent since 1990, and will continue to decline as we produce almost 8-million barrels a day from about half a million active wells.
One bright spot in this picture is the Gulf of Mexico, where production is increasing, particularly from new deepwater fields which are just now coming online. Maximizing the amount of oil that is ultimately extracted from these deepwater resources will be a key factor in reducing America's dependence on imported oil in the coming decades.
Fortunately, the oil industry has a lot of experience to draw on, and some highly efficient new technologies to aid the process. Undersea wells, and especially those in very deep water, frequently require artificial "lift" to get the oil and gas from the sea floor to tankers or production platforms at the surface.
In most cases, the "lift" is supplied by electrically powered pumps located on the sea floor near the well. These are large-scale installations consuming enough electrical energy to run a small manufacturing plant, and operating at speeds as high as 6,000 RPM. That's what it takes to move up to 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the sea floor to the surface.
The problem is that flow requirements are not constant, which means the pumping system must be controllable over a wide range to react to changing conditions. Variable speed motors are a complex solution, which is not what you want for an installation under two miles of seawater.
The latest and best solution uses a constant speed electric motor driving the pump through a hydrodynamic variable speed drive built by Voith Turbo of York, Pa.
Since the motor operates at constant speed, the electrical requirements are very simple and the whole motor/drive/pump package is very compact with few external connections.
The electric motor powers the input section of the drive which is hydraulically coupled to the output section attached to the wellhead pump. The principle is much like the automatic transmission in a car, except that Voith engineered it to be much more reliable, which is exactly what you want for an installation under two miles of seawater.
This kind of technology, which reduces production costs while improving recovery rates, will grow in importance in the coming decades as the race between production and consumption intensifies here and around the world.
Click here to download the diagram 'Subsea pumpsystem by Voith' http://www.directnews.de/servlets/LoadBinaryServlet/590450/subsea_pumpsystem.jpg