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Jul 21, 2023

Under pressure: How a Port Allen company makes industrial shut

In a nondescript warehouse off La. 1 on the west side of the Mississippi River,

In a nondescript warehouse off La. 1 on the west side of the Mississippi River, a Louisiana company produces the first line of defense for emergencies on offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

A family-owned and -operated business, CORTEC — which manufactures emergency shut-off valves, chokes and similar devices — first opened its doors in Houma in 2004 and established its Port Allen location two years later. The company has about 200 employees, around 50 of which are in West Baton Rouge Parish.

The Port Allen location, known as CORTEC Manifold Systems, specializes in compact emergency shut-off valves that halt the flow of oil or gas at a well head and can handle up to 20,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, or PSI, at a moment's notice. The company also makes drilling chokes that can reduce the flow of fluid or gas in a pipeline.

Shell, Chevron, Anadarko and Oxy are a few of its clients, and its valves have been shipped to offshore platforms as far away as Malaysia.

The valves are made from durable, pricey alloys called Inconel and are coated with tungsten carbide, a specialty chemical that makes the valve slick enough to spin quickly but tough enough to withstand harsh environments and extreme pressure. The tungsten carbide is applied at a temperature that roars past 1,900 degrees Celsius and a velocity faster than the speed of sound.

What sets CORTEC apart is its manufacturing method. Every part of its process — from the shaping of the metal to the specialty coatings — is done in Louisiana, a rarity in an industry obsessed with lowering costs.

Larry Chauvin, president of CORTEC Manifold Systems, and Stephen Corte, CORTEC's vice president of marketing and business development, sat down with The Advocate for an interview about the valves and the manufacturing process. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.

What exactly do these shut-off valves do?

Chauvin: "It is the safety valve on a platform. If there's some event that's happening and somebody hits the big red button, they’re relying on that valve to isolate the well heads on the sea floor from the people in the platform that are out there in the Gulf of Mexico."

How does your design and manufacturing process work?

Chauvin: "We’re building valves and designing, engineering and manufacturing valves (to handle) up to 20,000 PSI of pressure. It's very high. There are very few manufacturers that our client base, the Chevrons and Shells and Anadarkos of the world, can go to in order to build those high pressure valves. That's something that we specialize in. We do a lot of validation testing. We have our own testing facility here for product development. … We build a lot of our own test equipment here. We take these valves through pressure and temperature cycles to validate the designs. We’re engineering here, we’re validating the designs, and we’re implementing those designs into the field for our customer base."

What does the tungsten carbide do for the valves?

Chauvin: "It makes them very durable. It makes the surfaces resistant to abrasion. What allows us to put these valves on the platforms is that they’ve been qualified by an independent facility in San Antonio. Southwest Research is a big oil and gas third-party testing facility. They run these valves with a very special validation process with sand slurry inside of them. After they’ve cycled like 500 times with sand slurry flowing through them, they still are bubble tight."

What made Port Allen an ideal location for a CORTEC facility?

Corte: "We do have close proximity to the industry infrastructure here, close proximity to ports, things of that nature on the Gulf Coast that helps. I think here, being in Port Allen close to the state capitol, close to LSU, we’ve got a good talent pool for potential employees. Specifically, we have a lot of need for specialized employees — machinists, engineers, draftsmen, roles like that. Really what started us here was having a core nucleus of employees in the management role being here. I think there are a lot of amenities and benefits of being in this community."

What are the benefits of making everything in Louisiana?

Chauvin: "Control and quality, and deliveries. We are not a commodity supplier. Our customers don't come to us to save money. They come to us to fill a critical role. We have control over that critical application, that manufacturing process, by doing as much as we can in house and doing it here. There's a lot of talent in the oil and gas industry in south Louisiana."

Are there any challenges to making everything in Louisiana?

Corte: "The biggest challenge, I would say, is just cost. We do fight a commodity-minded industry. Oftentimes we resist potential clients trying to categorize us in the same boat as maybe a commodity-minded corporate structure. We have an under-one-roof philosophy. We’re really controlling our destiny, all of the aspects of manufacturing, and not only quality but lead time, being able to deliver things faster, under our own timeline constraints."

Where do you think the industrial sector is heading?

Chauvin: "This will be a record year for us this year. It just continues to increase, and worldwide demand for oil and gas is going to continue to increase. I know we have climate change, and it's a problem. It needs to be addressed. But you can't end life on the planet because everything we do in our lives is dependent on energy. We just have to find better ways to do it. There will be a transition period, but during that transition period, oil and gas demand is still increasing. We just have to find ways to do it cleaner and safe."

Email Robert Stewart at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter, @ByRobertStewart.