A Scottish company claims its new down hole sensor technology can operate in temperatures 20 degrees hotter than the planet Venus.
Aberdeenshire-based Zenith Oilfield Technology Limited will unveil a white paper on its XT system on June 14th at the Society of Petroleum Engineers Conference in Barcelona.
The company's current HT (Hi Temp) system is already forcing a redrawing of the boundaries in terms of temperatures, with the sensory innovation capable of performing at 247 degrees Celsius.
However, its XT application, which uses state of the art ceramic insulation, has been successfully tested up to 500 degrees Celsius.
Managing director Greg Davie believes the firm's latest offering could significantly improve the reliability of monitoring high temperature oil wells in years to come as well as overcoming the "historic problem" of analysing steam flood operations.
Zenith states that it is "driven by the challenge of advancing technologies for the monitoring and analysis of down hole data".