Tubes d’Aquitaine

Tubes d’Aquitaine was the first company to design and manufacture a reinforced polyethylene pipe, including a connecting system able to be connected to the existing flanges made usually of steel. This French company gave the first length of RTP, with flanges and connectors, to British Gas and Shell Reseach in June 1995. After one year of tests Shell decided to let the RTP be installed in a field in Oman.

At the end of 1996, Tubes d’Aquitaine provided 7 km of 6 in dia RTP and monitored the installation of the new technology in field, where usually steel pipes get corroded and leak after 3 or 4 months. In this particular field the RTP allowed the number of leaks per year to be reduced from about 200 to zero. Since the first installation RTP manufactured by this company has been used to transport corrosive water at high pressure and corrosive gas, more than 300 RTP lines have been put in service up to now.

At the beginning of 1999 Gérard Chevrier, the inventor of the RTP and founder of Tubes d’Aquitaine, designed three types of automatic machines able to install RTP at a speed of 500 metres per hour. These machines provide solutions to very different problems. For instance, the capability to install in tropical forest 20 km of pipeline in a week instead of 6 months.’

Tubes d’aquitaine, Route de Souillac, 24200 Carsac, France