LEADING international oilfield service company Expro has announced the successful qualification and field trial of its FlowCat retrofit wireless safety valve. The valve has recently completed a six-month trial in a gas well located onshore Southern Italy.

This success marks the first use of Expro’s award-winning Cableless Telemetry System (CaTS) in a flow control application. CaTS is a revolutionary development in the field of reservoir monitoring and control, allowing information to be transmitted in real time to and from downhole instruments without the use of cables.

Its two-way transmission capability enables the remote control of downhole instrumentation, opening the path to the radical redesign of downhole completions. FlowCAT is a fail safe closed safety valve that can be installed in the well’s existing safety valve nipple profile, or by using an alternative suspension mechanism, and is controlled from surface using the CaTS Electromagnetic (EM) wireless telemetry technology.

Installed in December 2008, the 4 ½” FlowCAT valve was deployed into the well using standard slickline intervention methods and, over the course of the six months, was cycled and inflow tested regularly during periods of both production and injection.