The oil and gas industry is faced with a shortage of sufficiently experienced personnel and pressure control-related accidents have occurred as a result. Several of these incidents have involved ram type preventers and/or stripping rams. Our Snubsmart system is designed to prevent exactly this type of situation.
In many cases, inexperienced and/or inattentive personnel have been able to pull pipe directly into the rams, even when the rams were in the closed position. This has caused pipe to part and in some cases, tragic events have occurred. Snubco’s commitment to operator safety led to a new type of solution.
While other manufacturers focused on hydraulic sensors to detect ram position, we focused on a solution that employs wireless proximity switches. Why? Because hydraulic sensors are easy to trick, but our wireless proximity sensors require that rams be 100% in the open position before personnel can move the pipe.
We designed the system to be free of wires and 100% intrinsically safe. The wireless communication eliminates the need for inconvenient rig up of hoses or wires that would otherwise clutter the work area or wellhead. Once we began incorporating these wireless capabilities into our rigs, the potential for expansion into other systems was endless.
In conjunction with the ram transducers, an early goal was to limit the throttle output of a unit if the rams were closed. Communication between wireless ram transducers and a wireless throttle transducer allowed for this with ease.
This system became known as SnubSmart.