Whether it’s water, oil or natural gas, drilling straight down into the earth has traditionally been the best way to go about extracting resources. However, the direction of a wellbore can be changed in a number of ways, and so-called “directional drilling” is today a common alternative to vertical wells. Drillers often prefer directional drilling in shale reservoirs because it is sometimes the best way to access the most…

If you have ever visited the mid-west or western parts of the United States, chances are you've seen those giant wind farms that span hundreds and even thousands of acres across prairie and desert lands. In recent years, the same technology used to drive those powerful turbines onshore has been employed offshore to harvest enough wind energy to generate…

Mark Tool and Elite Elastomers entered into a joint venture focused on the research, development, and end-use application for complete elastomeric subsea high temperature thermal insulation systems which can be installed via three methods to include S-Lay, J-Lay, and Reel-Lay. The newly formed company has been named MTE Engineered Materials. The chosen name represents the combined…

Anybody who has worked in oil and gas knows one universal truth: all steel pipelines corrode. We know what causes pipe corrosion and what to do to minimize it. Properly managing pipeline integrity means waging an ongoing battle against general and localized corrosion, biofouling, pitting and preferential weld corrosion. Losing the fight means risking catastrophic failure.…

Polyurethane is the ultimate workhorse. Whether used as a spray, foam, a flexible, spongey elastomer or a solid that is as hard and tough (almost) as any diamond, polyurethane’s versatility means it can be molded into components of any size, shape and hardness. The oil and gas industry demands a lot from its tools,including customization…

Polyurethane components play a prominent role in horizontal drilling operations, both at the surface and in promoting the material stability of downhole operations. You don’t hear as much about horizontal drilling as you do about hydraulic fracturing (also called “fracing” in the industry and “fracking” outside the industry). Let’s take a look at why this directional boring technique is playing such a huge role in the…

To most people, “machining” means transforming raw metal into a specific shape and size. However, wood, ceramic and plastic can all be machined as well. Our clients in oil and gas, mining, manufacturing and food processing have all discovered cast polyurethane parts can also be machined into excellent products with a wide range of uses. Since urethane compounds exhibit a variety of physical characteristics, they can be…

Commercial towing vessels depend on tow lines, also known as hawsers. They also depend on Mark Tool to keep those lines protected from chafing and from the harmful effects of seawater. Whether used for offshore oil and gas operations, dead-ship towing or salvage, the towing hawser is the key element in the tug-tow connection. Hawsers…

Successful J-tube pulls at the world’s deepest conventional platforms require complete confidence in the equipment being used. Your team needs the assurance that pipes and flowlines are electrically insulated and corrosion-proof. That’s why Mark Tool’s SplashTRON-coated pipelines are guaranteed to withstand the process of raising pipeline to the deck of a fixed offshore platform’s jacket…

Polymers are everywhere. In the natural world, starch, cellulose and rubber have polymeric properties. Man-made polymers include spandex, polyester and nylon, as well as plastic. Made up of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of monomer molecules, polymers are sometimes called "macromolecules,” and can be classified according to their composition and properties: Thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) will…

The oil and gas industry loves polyurethane. The versatile polymer resists water, pressure,heat and corrosion, all the while maintaining toughness and elasticity. A lot of polyurethane is put to use under the ocean’s waves, where it makes up the pressure-resistant insulation on deep-sea diving bells and subsea buoys.You can find it in the thermal insulation…

It may be too soon to start talking about Christmas, but holidays are a year-round annoyance for the oil and gas industry. We’re not talking about the festive season spent with family and friends, of course, but about the defects known as "holidays”that can appear as the result of damage or human error in the…

In many areas of the world, marine life such as barnacles, mussels and algae don't accumulate much more than a few inches. The waters off the coast of California, however, are a different story. There (and anyplace where waters are relatively cold and hold more nutrients), biofouling can build up to as much as three-feet…

A metal tube and metal pipe seem like they might refer to the same thing to some folks, but in the oil and gas industry, we know better. In a nutshell, tubing is usually more of a structural element than pipe, which is, more often, used to transport liquids. With tubing, wall thickness (measured by…

With drilling operations digging deeper wells in 2017, high-temperature, high-pressure environments call for materials suitable for the job. This includes pipeline coatings that perform well in these difficult settings. In the 1960s, steel pipes coated "in the field” with asphalt and coal tar-based wraps gave way to FBE (fusion-bonded epoxy) systems. FBE continues to be…