A bold new world for oil and gas

The past decade has been exhilarating for the oil and gas industry. Challenges that seemed insurmountable just a few years ago are now yielding to bold new technologies, and operators around the world are in an exciting race to a borderless market. We feel privileged to be involved with many of these companies during this demanding period.

The foundations on which GE is continually developing to meet these challenges include:

• Comprehensive capabilities and premium technology
• Executional excellence
• Customer partnership and guidance

Comprehensive capabilities and premium technology

GE’s Oil & Gas business offers a broad portfolio of premium technologies to meet the industry’s most challenging applications – including most of the rotating and static equipment needed for the oil & gas industry. Our engineers design and build the most advanced machinery, components and software – all custom-tailored to meet our customers’ needs. In addition to manufacturing industry-leading new equipment, we regularly uprate, retrofit and refurbish machinery made by other original equipment manufacturers, to achieve life extensions and operating efficiencies thought impossible just a short time ago.

But, quite possibly the single most important contribution we offer the industry is our development of new premium technologies. Just a few of our recent milestones include:

• The world’s largest LNG ‘supertrains’, rated at 7.8 MTPY, two of which are scheduled for installation in Qatar in 2007.  Each train consists of three compression lines (nitrogen, mixed refrigerant and propane) driven by our Frame 9E gas turbines. We are proud to confirm that the testing of the nitrogen compressor has been successfully completed.
• The world’s largest high-pressure turbo-compressor train for sour gas re-injection. The train (BCL404/B+BCL304/C+BCL304/E) has just been string-tested and successfully handled sour gas up to 18% H2Sand pressure of 800 bar. It is scheduled for installation on a marine operating pelatform in 2007 andwill provide the technology and capacity necessary to fully develop reserves in the Caspian Sea and other equally harsh environments.
• Heavy-wall reactors (HWR’s) which provide unique capabilities for refinery and tar sands applications. We built our first reactors more than 40 years ago and have continued to develop this technology through the years, guided by the needs of industry and process licensors. Our latest evolution is ready to be put to work for the development of tar sands reserves.  In fact, GE  is one of the most qualified and referenced suppliers of HWR’s heavey-wall reactors (HWRs) equipped with the latest generation of vanadium-modified materials. These allow us to manufacture reactors up to 400 mm in thickness and exceeding 1,500 tons.

Executional excellence

Quite frequently, the most valuable innovations in oil and gas come, not from entirely new technologies, but from incremental improvements acquired through decades of experience, and creative combinations of technologies that form innovative solutions to complex challenges.

We have gained such deep and varied experience over the years, in technologies across all sectors of the oil and gas industry, that we are rarely faced with an entirely unique challenge. Even if our people haven’t seen your particular challenge before, chances are they have seen something close in our installed base of rotating and static equipment.

Link to article on Global Services support.

Drawing on past experience and rigorous procedures we are frequently able to fast-track critical projects, in some cases bringing them to completion months earlier than industry-standard times. Operators can respond more quickly to evolving market conditions, secure in the knowledge that there will be no reductions in quality associated with our faster delivery times. Indeed, quality is inherent in everything we do. Our Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing processes are integrated throughout the entire organization and we treat every project as an opportunity for evaluating and improving our engineering, design, manufacturing, testing, installation and service capabilities.

Over the past five years, GE’s Oil & Gas business has doubled its investment in testing equipment and infrastructure from $50 MM to $100 MM. Currently, we operate 11 test beds in Massa and 8 test beds in Florence. Our unparalleled testing capabilities allow us to recreate the precise operating conditions of any customer application, so faster delivery never has to be weighed against performance or reliability. This ability to build on our experience extends beyond the Oil & Gas business. By drawing on the strengths and experience of the entire GE organization, we can reach practical solutions to a vast range of technological challenges.

Link to article on manufacturing and service quality processes.

Another opportunity we offer customers is the ability to fast-track their projects by exploiting our past experience. To do so, customers often take advantage of ‘Duplicate Projects’ – these are projects that mirror equipment from our installed base. Duplicate Projects allow us to take advantage of past learning to minimize ’surprises’ in the field. Because we draw on proven  given thetechnology, we are frequently able to accelerate the process to reduce delivery time while enhancing product quality. The Duplicate Project concept is most often employed by customers with whom we have established a frame agreement.

Link to article on frame agreements.

Customer partnership and guidance

We recognize that our success is entirely dependent on the success of the oil and gas industry as a whole. This is why we invest so heavily in research and development activities – with a budget of $300 MM over the next three years – and will continue to do so in decades to come. Our vast cross-industry experience and close customer relationships are invaluable in directing R&D resources for the greatest long term gain. The knowledge and direction that our customers provide helps us identify technology needs and focus activities where solutions will be needed most urgently in the future. Only with this perspective and team approach can we successfully meet today’s requirements while taking the steps necessary to ensure that tomorrow’s will also be met. Our broad-reaching portfolio of solutions and continual investment in innovation means that our customers will always be able to rely on GE for timely solutions to the newest industry applications – whether these take the form of tar sands development, Gas-to-Liquids technology, LNG regasification or technologies that haven’t yet been imagined, much less developed.

Our long-term view, our strength, stability, vast resources, and commitment to the success of the global oil & gas industry ensure that we will be as capable of offering operators solutions to their most challenging applications in the future as we are today.