One day late in 2015, two friends were having lunch at a beach side cafe in the shadow of 4 new-build deep water drilling rigs. Unsettled by the fact that current BOPs could not reliably shear and shut in a blowout, they came up with the idea for a chemical propellant based shearing technology as an alternative to the traditional hydraulic-mechanical BOPs.
The traditional technology works like a pair of scissors which relies on mechanically applied pressure to create the force to shear. The new idea works like a bullet which leverages kinetic energy to exponentially increase force on the blade thus drastically increasing its shearing capability without increasing size and weight. The idea took form as they proofed their design, modeled its performance, and finally built a prototype.
In a matter of milliseconds what had been one piece of steel drill collar pipe with 3 ½” outer diameter and 1” thick walls, safely became two cleanly sheared pieces inside of a 4 1/6” BOP body. The first shearing test of Kinetic Pressure Control’s prototype Kinetic Blowout Stopper, or K-BOS, was a success.
