The last trip on our list was the trip to Schlumberger. Many people would not have heard of this company but it is one of the world's largest oilfield service provider. Anything that has to do with gas and oil, they are doing something with it. They invent, engineer, design and apply technologies to make extraction of oil and gas beneath the surface of the Earth more efficient and cost-effective. It is a big company with 110,000 employees in almost 80 countries. The factory in Singapore that we were visiting specialise in manufacturing ESP (Electric Submersive pump) and Gas lift pump.
These pumps are required because as time passes and more oil from underground rise to surface, the pressure that force the oil up the normal pipe is too low and a lot of oil are still stuck below the surface. These pumps either increases the pressure, or forcefully push the oil up the pipe to the surface. The functions of the pipe will be elaborate later.
The Schlumberger compound has four main areas that we visited, the DHE Machining Centre, DHE Motor Winding centre, Gauge lab and the Gas Lift Valve centre.
I believe we went to the foundry first, where they melt iron and other metals. This is one of the three foundries in Singapore as many companies have moved theirs away to other countries such as China. They melt iron and use them to make their machine parts. They also make their own mould, core and therefore their own parts. The mould is the basic shaping of the soon to be machine part while the core is the real thing that shapes the molten iron to its specific shape. We did not see molten iron on day 1 but on day 2, we finally saw the melting of iron and pouring in action. It was a ray of golden light. Its really beautiful to watch. Iron in the molten form was bright and captivating. The people pouring the iron had a very serious and dangerous job. They had to wear a silver colour suit that was said to be made from aluminate. Sparks flew everywhere so the workers have to be protected. The foundry is certainly not a comfortable place to be. It was hot and stuffy. We had to wear helmets, goggles, mask and headphones to listen to the tour. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I believe it was due to the mask. The lack of oxygen made me feel weak and about 20 mins into the tour of the foundry that I told the teacher about my condition. Therefore, I was taken away from the foundry and missed the tour of the DHE Motor winding centre. I was given water and time t rest before I joined the tour again. The foundry was certainly not comfortable to be in and the workers there who worked everyday had my admiration.
We went to the gas lift valve centre. Basically, when an oil reservoir is found under the Earth surface, the way to get the oil out to the surface is by putting a pipe from the surface down into the reservoir. The pressure on the oil is massive and since stuff flows from a place with higher pressure to lower pressure, under normal circumstances, the oil could be pushed to the surface for us to collect. However, reality is cruel and we need to work for the things we want. As more oil is collected, the pressure in the oil reservoir decreases and no more oil reaches the surface. Therefore pumps like the ESP and gas lift pumps are needed to force oil out to the surface. Gas lift pumps pump high pressure gas into the oil reservoir. This "lightens" the oil and makes it easier to reach the surface. To make the pump, a lot of steps are involved. One of the most significnt one was the heat treatment.Heat treatment is the heating and cooling of the metal rapidly to change the structure and thus property of the metal used into machine parts. Apparently, the specific heat and cooling done in Schlumberger makes the pipe hard but not too hard to make them brittle, thus the pipe will be able to withstand high pressure.
The gauge lab is a clean room where all the testing and quality control is done such as heat testing, vibration testing and so on. This ensures that the manufactured parts from Schlumberger is of high quality so it does to trouble the buyers when it malfunctions. Apparently, in an oil rig, time is gold and any time loss equals millions of dollars flushed down the drain.
Next, we job shadowed an engineer and she brought us to the DHE Machining centre. It was normal. We saw grinding machines, high speed-cutting machines and many many more machines.This is where the ESP is built or at least the parts of it. It was noisy stil there was grinding of metal. We got to see how the engineers and workers work. Apparently, they have designated "fire" zones. What I meant is, those are the places where there are sparks, burning or melting of iron ( potential fire places) They also have to get a permit for it. Safety is Schlumberger greatest concern and anyone worker who feels it is dangerous to do something has the right to stop production. They have many safety measures too. We saw many more huge machines that cut metal blocks or punch holes into them. Each machine easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Metal scrap percentage was 0.6% which I thought was low but when I realised how much metal is used in making the parts, a lot of metal was actually scraped.
Following that, we followed the engineer to a meeting. She had a meeting with other engineers and so we sat in. We had no idea what they were talking about. Apparently, they were discussing the use of a programme that was suppose to increase efficiency by easing the planners' jobs. Planning the arrival and use of metal parts or something like that. There were errors and they were discussing how to fix it. The meeting was inconclusive and required many more meetings in the future to get the job done. It was interesting to see engineers of different races in such a small meeting alone. This shows Schlumberger is a true blue MNC. It was a privilege to sit in the meeting and we experienced a real corporate meeting. It was certainly interesting to see the intellectual sharing and discussion between professionals and the gestures they used to convey their message.
Not many people knows what the oil and gas companies do. Many people focus on going green but oil and gas industry still plays a significant part in our economy. With no oil ,there will be no electricity and people cannot live without electricity. As oil soon runs out, Schlumberger would be out of business. Actually, many people from other sectors would be out of business too. However, as oil is running out, people will dig deeper for this precious resource and the demand for such pumps would go up. It was an invaluable experience and certainly open our eyes to the oil and gas industry
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