5 tips for selecting an oil and gas production equipment fabricator

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

How do you know which production equipment fabricator to go to?

When you’re looking for oil and gas production equipment for flowback and sand management, sometimes the best option is to have it custom made from a production equipment fabricator. While off-the-shelf equipment like sand filters and oilfield separators can do the job, in certain situations, a customized piece of equipment yields better results.

There are many options available in the industry. In order to narrow your selection, we’ve provided 5 expert tips for selecting a production equipment fabricator for your operations. 

Look for a shop that offers full-service custom fabrication

Many production equipment fabricators focus on building cookie-cutter products that are not customizable for different applications. As a result, there is no consideration for well flow conditions, geographic characteristics, and production goals. We recommend working with a full-service custom production equipment fabricator that can not only design custom equipment, but bring it to life. 

For example, at EnerCorp, we:

• Conduct thorough research and development. We have a full research and development team that is focused on continuous improvement, running simulations on the products we’re manufacturing to ensure they meet performance requirements. 
• Apply specialized engineering expertise. We use a multivariate approach on all new oilfield equipment designs using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to develop highly effective sand management solutions for our clients. 
• Can customize any aspect of our equipment. We consider flow rates, wellhead pressures, solid particle size, and other characteristics when manufacturing our sand management solutions. This enables us to build equipment to exact specifications for optimized results. 
• Use advanced sand management technology and designs. Many of our sand management solutions are based on the industry-leading Sahara Advanced Sand Cyclone, which has a sand capture rate of 97% or more. This is the foundation of many of our designs, enabling clients to remove virtually all sand from their production stream with our equipment.

Find out if the fabricator operates their own equipment in the field

The majority of production equipment fabricators don’t operate their machinery in the field because they don’t have an operations arm of the business. The issue with this is that they don’t have full insight into how their equipment works in real-world conditions. We recommend working with a production equipment fabricator that also operates their own equipment for clients in the field — in a variety of geographies. Why? It provides many learning opportunities with which to improve equipment design and development.

At EnerCorp, we design, build, sell, rent, and operate our technology in the field. This provides us with many advantages that we can pass on to our clients:

• End-to-end capability: Our teams can man the wellsite, monitor our technology, and operate the production facility during flowback and early production — in addition to designing and developing the equipment itself. This approach provides us with immense insight into how the equipment behaves under certain conditions, which is information we use to optimize the design and manufacturing process.

• Continuous feedback: When we operate our equipment in the field at thousands of wellsites each year, we get continuous feedback from our field operators and customers. Other fabricators who don’t operate their own equipment don’t get to hear or see how their equipment works — and what their customers think of it.

• High reliability: Anything we build — whether it’s a sand separator, sand filter, or other sand management system — has been used many thousands of times in the field. This means that we have seen firsthand any potential issues that may arise from using the equipment, and have had ample opportunity to correct for those issues. Our equipment is highly reliable, resulting in less downtime in the field.

Check the production equipment fabricator’s certifications

Safety and reliability standards are in place for a reason. When selecting a production equipment fabricator, ask to see their credentials. This will tell you a lot about how seriously the company views safety and reliability, both for their employees and their customers.

At EnerCorp, we go above and beyond when it comes to safety and reliability.

• We meet all relevant ASME and ABSA standards for design, fabrication, assembly, and inspection of all components for both vessels and piping.
• Each design is reviewed and stamped by Professional Engineers on staff to completely ensure the integrity of the product.
• Our fabrication shop is located in Alberta, Canada. For all installs outside of Canada, we register each vessel with the National Board to track that vessel throughout its life in service.

Ask what innovative technology the fabricator uses

At any given moment, with any given project, there are hundreds of moving parts when designing and developing sand management and flowback equipment. This can lead to high costs for customers. When selecting a production equipment fabricator, we recommend asking how they use innovative technology to increase productivity. 

At EnerCorp, we understand how important the bottom line is for customers. That’s why we invest in the latest technology to increase efficiency during fabrication. For example, we have the HGG Profiler, an industry-leading pipe cutting and profile machine that greatly reduces the amount of time required for certain parts of manufacturing. The cuts made with the HGG Profiler are exceptionally precise and clean, requiring fewer hours — which means less hours charged for our clients.

Learn about the production equipment fabricator’s efforts to repair older equipment

Sometimes, oilfield equipment that has been used in the field for many years may require certain repairs and re-certifications in order to be reused. Some production equipment fabricators only design and manufacture new equipment while not repairing existing or older equipment. However, most operators will require equipment repairs at one time or another.

At EnerCorp, can assist operators with older equipment that is causing problems in the field to minimize downtime. When sand management equipment breaks down or doesn’t perform as it should, it can lead to costly damages at the facility level.

We not only repair broken equipment and get it back up and running on schedule, we also use innovative solutions like temper bead welding to salvage a used pressure vessel for re-use. This way, operators don’t have to commission an expensive new build or wait for delivery. Our ABSA-certified procedure results in fast turnarounds, lower costs, customization, and flexibility. Not many production equipment fabricators offer temper bead welding because it requires a considerable investment and specialized expertise.