ProTEC-C: A Downhole Cable for Continuous Production Monitoring at Depths of Over Three Kilometres

The Incab plant is expanding its range of specialty cables for the oil and gas industry. One of the key products is the ProTEC-C cable, designed for permanent installation in oil and gas wells. To date we have supplied more than 1,000 km of these cables for projects run by the country’s largest oil and gas companies. The traditional approach in production logging involves lowering a tool into the well, taking a measurement and then pulling it back up. Every such run-in-hole and pull-out operation requires production to be halted, causes equipment wear and incurs significant costs, while the data obtained is single-point in nature — it records conditions only at the moment of measurement. The ProTEC-C cable is designed for long-term service directly inside the well, right up to the scheduled workover. The cable is permanently clamped to the tubing string and lowered together with the sensors to depths of over three kilometres. Power is supplied downhole, and pressure and temperature data comes back up in real time. Separate run-in and pull-out operations for each measurement are no longer required, and continuous monitoring allows engineers to assess the behaviour of the reservoir itself rather than a distorted picture at the wellbore. The cable has a square cross-section. This geometry simplifies clamping to the tubing, prevents the cable from twisting during run-in and protects it within the tight annular clearance of the well. The format has become a global standard: manufacturers of cable protectors produce parts with a dedicated groove sized for ProTEC cables. Operating conditions are severe — high pressure and temperature, and at many fields an aggressive environment containing hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide as well. For this reason, the ProTEC-C contains a tube made of Alloy 825 nickel alloy. Incab purchases the alloy strip and forms the tube itself. The tube protects the cable core and ensures years of operation where ordinary metal would fail rapidly. As a result, the well runs without shutdowns for measurements, equipment is spared the wear of unnecessary operations, and engineers monitor the production regime remotely — which matters particularly at fields with hard-to-recover reserves. Production of ProTEC cables has been officially recognised by the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade as Russian-made: an expert assessment certificate has been obtained confirming compliance with the requirements of Russian Government Decree No. 719. ProTEC-C is one version within the range. The ProTEC-H and ProTEC-S cables carry an optical fibre inside, which can not only transmit data but also act as a distributed sensor in its own right — measuring temperature and strain over tens of kilometres. Solutions of this kind are used to monitor pipelines, bridges and tunnels. For enquiries about ProTEC cable applications, please contact: Sergey Toropov, Head of Specialty Cable Sales in Russia, +7 (342) 211-41-41, ext. 108, toropov@incab.ru