 |
 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Oil and Gas |
| Founded | in 1958 |
| Headquarters | Billingham, England, UK |
| Products | Instrumentation and Diagnostic Services |
Number of employees | 400 |
| Parent | Johnson Matthey [1] |
| Website | https://www.Tracerco.com [2] |
Tracerco is the oil and gas services subsidiary of British chemical company and conglomerate Johnson Matthey. [3]
In 1958, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) established a division to research the use of ionizing radiation within chemical processes. They found it was not possible to use it as a catalyst, but found it could be used to assess/diagnose within the chemical process, typically ahead of plant turnarounds. In the 1960s the division was named Physics and Radioisotope Services, performing flow studies, heat exchanger leakage tests and column scans on a chemical plant in the UK. To support the work being done in hazardous areas, a range of Intrinsically safe radiation monitors were developed. Most of this early work was later recorded by Peter Jackson. [4]
In 1967, the first nuclear gauge was developed to measure the level within a vessel at Billingham chemical works. The Specialist Measurement Instruments section was established with a variety of level, trip, and Nuclear density gauges, commonly used in applications such as slug catchers and separation vessels.
A General Atomics Triga 250 kW Mark 1 nuclear reactor was operated from 1971 to 1998. This was used to create short half-life radioisotopes for use in chemical plant diagnostics, sample analysis and forensic work.
In the 1970s, the business supported the development of the North Sea oil industry, selling a range of services and nucleonic gauges. In the 1980s, bases were established in Aberdeen, Scotland, Houston, Texas, Sarnia, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta. Subsea gauges were developed for grout monitoring. A subsea nucleonic gauge level system was developed for Texaco Highlander Slug Catcher Tartan tieback, as well as techniques to assess and diagnose fluid catalytic cracking units.
In the 1990s, a range of Flooded Member Inspection and Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG) Tracking services were used in pipeline pigging campaigns. Tracer technologies were developed to allow oil companies to characterize fluid flow in oil and gas reservoirs and inside production wells.
The Tracerco Profiler entered the market in 2000. This Nuclear density gauge allows customers to see into their separator. This product received the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2003. In 2007, this instrument was deployed on Statoil's Tordis module, the world's first subsea oil and gas production facility. [5]
Imperial Chemical Industries sold the group to Johnson Matthey in 2002. [6]
The 2000s saw international expansion once again when Tracerco bought the Process Diagnostics division of QuestTruTec in 2006 to become the largest supplier of nucleonic diagnostic services currently in operation. [7] Regional expansion then followed with offices opening in Perth, Australia, Baku, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi.
In 2009, Tracerco announced the acquisition of Belgium-based Process Vision Services (PVS). [8] The acquisition facilitated the provision of Tracerco's more extensive range of process tracing and characterization technologies amongst clients throughout the refining and petrochemical industry in Europe and North Africa.
Also in 2009, Tracerco was awarded its third Queen's Award for Enterprise. This was for the innovation of its radiation monitoring instruments that are certified with intrinsic safety.
Discovery, the world's first subsea technology to provide medical grade CT scan information for pipeline inspection, was launched to the world's oil and gas industry in 2013. Discovery can measure pipe wall thickness through any type of pipeline coating to allow operators to make decisions about the short, medium and long term future of a subsea pipeline.
 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(November 2021) |
The company has 8 business areas:
An inspection is, most generally, an organized examination or formal evaluation exercise. In engineering activities inspection involves the measurements, tests, and gauges applied to certain characteristics in regard to an object or activity. The results are usually compared to specified requirements and standards for determining whether the item or activity is in line with these targets, often with a Standard Inspection Procedure in place to ensure consistent checking. Inspections are usually non-destructive.
Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases, where their presence is unintended or undesirable.
Well logging, also known as borehole logging is the practice of making a detailed record of the geologic formations penetrated by a borehole. The log may be based either on visual inspection of samples brought to the surface or on physical measurements made by instruments lowered into the hole. Some types of geophysical well logs can be done during any phase of a well's history: drilling, completing, producing, or abandoning. Well logging is performed in boreholes drilled for the oil and gas, groundwater, mineral and geothermal exploration, as well as part of environmental and geotechnical studies.
The Open-pool Australian lightwater reactor (OPAL) is a 20 megawatt (MW) swimming pool nuclear research reactor. Officially opened in April 2007, it replaced the High Flux Australian Reactor as Australia's only nuclear reactor, and is located at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) Research Establishment in Lucas Heights, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney. Both OPAL and its predecessor have been known simply as the Lucas Heights reactor.
In pipeline transportation, pigging is the practice of using pipeline inspection gauges or gadgets, devices generally referred to as pigs or scrapers, to perform various maintenance operations. This is done without stopping the flow of the product in the pipeline.
Radiochemistry is the chemistry of radioactive materials, where radioactive isotopes of elements are used to study the properties and chemical reactions of non-radioactive isotopes. Much of radiochemistry deals with the use of radioactivity to study ordinary chemical reactions. This is very different from radiation chemistry where the radiation levels are kept too low to influence the chemistry.
Condition monitoring is the process of monitoring a parameter of condition in machinery, in order to identify a significant change which is indicative of a developing fault. It is a major component of predictive maintenance. The use of condition monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions to be taken to prevent consequential damages and avoid its consequences. Condition monitoring has a unique benefit in that conditions that would shorten normal lifespan can be addressed before they develop into a major failure. Condition monitoring techniques are normally used on rotating equipment, auxiliary systems and other machinery like belt-driven equipment,, while periodic inspection using non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques and fit for service (FFS) evaluation are used for static plant equipment such as steam boilers, piping and heat exchangers.
Level sensors detect the level of liquids and other fluids and fluidized solids, including slurries, granular materials, and powders that exhibit an upper free surface. Substances that flow become essentially horizontal in their containers because of gravity whereas most bulk solids pile at an angle of repose to a peak. The substance to be measured can be inside a container or can be in its natural form. The level measurement can be either continuous or point values. Continuous level sensors measure level within a specified range and determine the exact amount of substance in a certain place, while point-level sensors only indicate whether the substance is above or below the sensing point. Generally the latter detect levels that are excessively high or low.
Subsea technology involves fully submerged ocean equipment, operations, or applications, especially when some distance offshore, in deep ocean waters, or on the seabed. The term subsea is frequently used in connection with oceanography, marine or ocean engineering, ocean exploration, remotely operated vehicle (ROVs) autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), submarine communications or power cables, seafloor mineral mining, oil and gas, and offshore wind power.
Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation (BNC) of San Rafael, California, United States, is an electronics company whose products range from pulse generators and digital delay generators to specialized handheld instruments and portal monitors capable of radiation detection and isotope identification.
The Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas is a public university in Moscow, Russia. The university was founded in 1930 and is named after the geologist Ivan Gubkin. The university is colloquially known as Kerosinka, meaning 'kerosene stove'.
Roxar AS was a provider of products and associated services for reservoir management and production optimisation in the upstream oil and gas industry. Roxar was headquartered in Stavanger, Norway and operated in 19 countries with around 900 employees. Roxar offered software for reservoir interpretation, modelling and simulation, as well as instrumentation for well planning, monitoring, metering and production optimisation. Roxar was acquired by Emerson Electric Company in April 2009.
Instrumentation is used to monitor and control the process plant in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries. Instrumentation ensures that the plant operates within defined parameters to produce materials of consistent quality and within the required specifications. It also ensures that the plant is operated safely and acts to correct out of tolerance operation and to automatically shut down the plant to prevent hazardous conditions from occurring. Instrumentation comprises sensor elements, signal transmitters, controllers, indicators and alarms, actuated valves, logic circuits and operator interfaces.
Technical Integrity Engineering, also known as Asset Integrity, involves various engineering disciplines that focus on ensuring a product, process, or system meets its intended requirements when used. Applying these disciplines to reduce costs, maintain schedules, manage technical risks, and handle legal concerns during a project's entire life cycle ensures operational safety and efficiency in e.g. Oil and Gas, Power Generation, and Nuclear Power industries.
In the petroleum industry, allocation refers to practices of breaking down measures of quantities of extracted hydrocarbons across various contributing sources. Allocation aids the attribution of ownerships of hydrocarbons as each contributing element to a commingled flow or to a storage of petroleum may have a unique ownership. Contributing sources in this context are typically producing petroleum wells delivering flows of petroleum or flows of natural gas to a commingled flow or storage.
Industrial Tomography Systems plc, occasionally abbreviated to ITOMS or simply ITS, is a manufacturer of process visualization systems based upon the principles of tomography. Headquartered in Manchester, UK, the company provides instrumentation to a variety of organisations across a range of sectors; including oil refining, chemical manufacturing, nuclear engineering, dairy manufacturing, and research/academia.
A radionuclide identification device is a small, lightweight, portable gamma-ray spectrometer used for the detection and identification of radioactive substances. As RIIDs are portable, they are suitable for medical and industrial applications, fieldwork, geological surveys, first-line responders in Homeland Security, and Environmental Monitoring and Radiological Mapping along with other industries that necessitate the identification of radioactive substances..
GE Oil & Gas was the division of General Electric that owned its investments in the petroleum industry. In July 2017, this division was merged with Baker Hughes.