SEALING TECHNOLOGY
UNLOCKING VISIBILITY ON SEAL PERFORMANCE
Mike Eason, Chief Technology Officer at John Crane, outlines why the future of oil and gas depends on engineering
innovation, with a focus on sealing technology
he energy sector is undergoing a significant transformation, and oil and gas companies are at the centre of this change. Increasing demands for sustainability, stricter decarbonisation targets and the need to curb fugitive emissions are reshaping industry priorities. Meanwhile, the global shift towards renewables and alternative energy sources is accelerating. In 2024, renewables accounted for 38% of the total increase in global energy supply, while growth in oil demand slowed to 0.8%. Oil and gas firms need to reconsider their strategies to adapt to these developments and strike a balance between risk and new opportunities in the energy transition. Now more than ever, operational excellence is crucial. Moving beyond regulatory compliance and meeting tougher safety, reliability and efficiency standards has become the baseline requirement. Long-term profitability is largely dependent on achieving high performance in these areas.
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Yet, downtime remains a major challenge. The industry loses an estimated $50 billion each year to unplanned outages, with equipment failures responsible for nearly half of that figure. For individual facilities, annual losses can reach $42 million due to unreliable equipment, highlighting the importance of robust, dependable systems. Overcoming these obstacles requires engineering expertise. Asset longevity and productivity are increased by solutions designed for the harsh conditions of oil and gas operations. They also help deliver better environmental outcomes, such as reducing waste and fugitive emissions.
These initiatives are increasingly aided by digital innovation. Technologies such as sensors and digital platforms help businesses monitor and safeguard vital assets, improving operational resilience.
It goes without saying that the reliability of
equipment depends on the quality of its design and manufacture. Given the impact of unplanned downtime, industrial machinery – particularly in mission-critical applications – must be engineered for enhanced reliability and productivity.
This level of precision is essential in demanding environments. Nowhere is this more evident than on offshore platforms and in gas transportation pipelines. On offshore platforms, where space is limited and operational downtime is extremely costly, advanced sealing technologies help improve uptime and reduce maintenance challenges. In gas transportation pipelines, reliable seals are critical for preventing leaks, protecting the environment and supply chain integrity. To reach the high standards required in these environments, micro-machined patterns and engineered features are incorporated into dry gas seals. Selecting the right separation seal technology can deliver benefits in terms of uptime, asset protection and efficiency. Take John Crane’s Type 93AX coaxial separation seal: its compact, robust design helps maintain seal integrity and reliability in high-demand environments. In testing, this seal was found to reduce nitrogen consumption by up to 80% compared with conventional separation seal designs. This represents a win-win situation: it lowers operational expenditure while also supporting broader sustainability goals. The World Economic Forum projects that digital technologies could cut emissions by 20% across energy, materials and mobility by 2050. With such impressive projections, it’s easy to assume that technologies like AI and advanced analytics operate in a vacuum. But their impact is contingent on how they interact with the real world, whether that’s a car or an offshore platform. Technology can help optimise and safeguard assets – but the performance of those assets still depends on engineering excellence.
32 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025 | PROCESS & CONTROL
This relationship between digital and physical infrastructure is at the heart of smart diagnostics and condition monitoring solutions. These technologies use sensors to monitor the physical environment, paired with advanced platforms capable of providing near real-time insights. This gives organisations greater visibility of their operations, improving cost efficiency and minimising waste to enabling maintenance strategies that reduce unplanned downtime and increase the lifespan of critical assets. What does this look like in the oil and gas industry? Given its tendency to operate in hazardous zones and deploy difficult-to-reach assets, the benefits of remote monitoring and management cannot be overstated. Both wired and remote solutions can deliver value in these environments, providing visibility of critical equipment without the need for constant on-site intervention. Smart diagnostics and condition monitoring solutions can help identify issues across their operations and safeguard critical assets. For example, John Crane Sense Turbo – a wired sensor solution - uses sensors embedded into dry gas seals to perform continuous data collection. This reduces the need for manual seal inspections, saving companies time, money and resources. Data from the sensors can also be used by analytics systems and industry experts to recommend actions that ensure optimal operating conditions. For example, a world-leading liquified natural gas (LNG) producer lacked the insights needed to understand dry gas seal performance; they were relying on seal vent detection to monitor health. Because of this lack of visibility, they shut down operations every time they saw high-vibration measurements on the compressor to avoid damage. But once they installed John Crane Sense Turbo, it became clear that most of the measurements were unrelated to the seal and
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