Basically the premium connection market started in the 1930’s. This is when the drillers wanted to complete their oil and gas wells deeper and the standard API connections were taxed on their capabilities. The ends of the pipe were hot forged and were mostly hot forged pin and box. This took very specialized equipment. Also because of the expense small businesses would have difficulty in creating a facility to compete. Therefore there was less than a handful of companies in the OCTG premium connection market. Very low amount of connection designs to choose from.
During this time period premium connections were only considered premium if the pipe was hot forged Pin by Box (integral). This belief lasted even through the 80’s and 90’s. High performance Non upset pin threaded and coupled (T&C) was only believed semi premium. Major Oil companies were very reluctant to purchase semi premium because of potential law suits even though of no fault of their own.
New connections needed a long history of proven performance before most users would even consider purchasing them. Still holds in today’s time but because of the relatively new physical testing requirements (API 5C5) users have less excuses to not give the new connections a try.
During the 50’s and 60’s the R&D engineers paid more attention to strength of materials and physics. This was the beginning of calculated proof that the OCTG connections were reliable. Believe it not this was done by slide rules, no electronic calculators.
However, the early 80’s there was very bad downturn in the market (cheap oil) and a lot of pipe manufacturers when bust and also specialized threading facilities. Many large oilfield equipment companies were being consumed and consolidated. Big companies bought by small companies and some big companies bought high tech companies. It was a feeding frenzy. This downturn lasted until the mid-90’s.
A life saver for the premium connection market was the Canadian tars sands project in the early 90’s through today. They required different performance connections at a very low cost. High torque and very good bending capabilities. The pipe mills started developing their own very high torque connections and in the early 2010’s introduced their own focusing on offshore, tar sands, and shale.
At this period of time there is a concentration of new connections strictly for the shale applications. High torque, high bending, and high fatigue resistance. Along with high internal pressure and axial compression resistance.
We at MHC have witnessed or have been trained on this technology and knowledge on the past technology.
