Searching
for oil is getting harder as it goes faster, safer, farther and deeper
under the world's seas, said industry sellers and buyers of technical
equipment on Monday, the first day of the four-day Offshore Technology
Conference (OTC) held in the fourth largest U.S. city of Houston.The
good news is that new technologies are rising to the global challenge,
making it possible to ensure that oil production will be a staple of the
energy field for at least the next century if not the next 200 years,
said oil production company experts who exhibited their newest
innovations at the OTC, one of the world's largest offshore technology
shows.prepregGardiner
Henderson is a spokesman for Eaton Cooper. The business stems from a
merger earlier this year of Eaton, a business that builds hydrolic
systems, with Cooper Industries, which supplies lighting, safety and
housing systems for the oil and gas industry."For offshore, we're going
into deeper water. It's more challenging, so we've got a lot of products
that are providing ways to address those challenges," said Henderson,
who said the company has on and offshore facilities all over the
world.There's no doubt, Henderson said, that the oil business is
booming."The capital investment for the oil and gas industry this year
is 1.2 trillion (U.S.) dollars," he said."Basically what we're seeing
right now is we see the market continuing. We know there's a lot of
investments being made in a lot of the deep water areas," said Steve
Racca, vice president of MacDermid Offshore Solutions. The Texas-based
company manufactures a water-based hydrolic fluid that is used to
control the sub-sea systems.Racca said some areas of Asia are increasing
their offshore drilling.
"We
are seeing projects in the South China sea and areas in Vietnam that
are starting to get a little deeper," Racca said.He said there is also a
lot of offshore drilling going on now in South America, West Africa and
the Gulf of Mexico, which is becoming more active again since the BP
oil spill led to new standards in safety."That spill is setting a new
standard," Racca said. "There are increased safety measures put in place
that is becoming the industry standard. Everything throughout the
industry is picking up and we don't see an end in sight as long as it's
oil."Help in cleaning up that oil spill was one of the early jobs of
Chukar Water Jet Inc.,Antique bath fixtures a
company based in St. Michael, Minnesota, that makes water jet equipment
for sub-sea salvage, pipeline maintenance and repair, well
decommissioning and hydrating remediation."We can see the continued
activity in offshore oil drilling, not just in the Gulf of Mexico, but
around the world, including Asia and Eurasian regions," said Bruce
Kivisto, Chukar's general manager. "Everything today is farther, faster,
better.tyre equipments""It's
always going to be a growth area. There's always a demand for very
safe, reliable equipment for offshore use even more than land-leased
use," said Ted Flatt, marketing director, Doosan Portable Power, a North
Carolina company that builds air compressors and mobile generators.
"Offshore drilling is a safe bet for people to invest in? Oh,
absolutely."Halliburton, one of the world's largest providers of
products and services to the energy industry, agrees. The company, which
is in about 80 countries serving the upstream oil and gas industry,
finds hydrocarbons and manages geological data,carbon fabric as
well as drills, performs formation evaluations, builds wells and
optimizes production."Oil and gas development in deep water is an
essential part of the U.S. and global energy future," said Halliburton's
chief operating officer, Jeff Miller. "There's a fairly broad consensus
that world oil demand will grow at about 1.5 percent per year for the
foreseeable future. Successful deepwater exploration is critical to the
future of the oil and gas industry."Drilling EXchange, a new Woodlands,
Texas, company that combines oilfield drilling equipment and the
Internet was launched Monday at OTC, and the people behind it say they
are assured that they have found a one-of-a-kind, profitable niche
market in a growing oil drilling industry.
"We
think people are going to be using oil and gas for the next 200 years,"
said Dan Henderson, chief executive officer and former oil industry
executive. "This business is the eBay of the oil industry where we put
together buyers and sellers of oil industry equipment, but without the
fees. It's a subscription-based service. I'm taking what I've learned
from the oil business and the Internet and putting it all together in a
business model."By noon Monday, dozens of new subscribers had signed
on."Based on what we're seeing, people like it," Henderson said.The
offshore technology industry has been so good that T-Rex Engineering,
which had limited its engineering construction and design of sub-sea
structures to the Gulf of Mexico, has recently had its first global
outreach, said the company's chief executive officer Mike Gore."We are
currently working on a project with Equador where we have designed and
fabricated three shallow water jacket structures for offshore oil and
gas," Gore said. "Our niche is more sub-sea and this year alone, we have
tripled from where we were last year."Jaap Vaandrager heads MH
Hydrolics DV based in the Netherlands, which repairs and services
hydrolic parts and systems and has also recently expanded its services
to include training for the oil patch on or offshore. There aren't
enough qualified technicians and engineers, he said, to keep up with
demand in the oil patch.Cast iron clawfoot tubs"A
year ago, we bought the company and we found out it was important to
create a training arm," Vaandrager said. "We now have a franchise system
and we go around the world and teach people how to repair parts. If
they use our parts, of course, that's even better."Vaandrager said the
training portion of the company is thriving."We have people who are
exploring the markets particularly in China and India," Vaandrager said.
"I see a problem having enough qualified technicians, so we are
technically training, retraining and requalifying people in countries
with large populations to work in the oil and gas industry."Cliff Berry,
vice president of global business development for Centek, Inc.,
headquartered in Oklahoma, said his business manufactures parts,
predominately centralizers, for the oil and gas industry. Over the last
five years, he said, business has increased 38 percent to 43 percent
each year."By 2015, over 65 percent of wells drilled will be in the
states, so we opened a mirror operation to the one we have in Devon
(England) in Oklahoma City to position ourselves in the states," Berry
said. "We see the trend is for oil and gas parts and accessories to be
about 1.5 billion (U.S. dollars) by 2015."Asia, he said, is the place
where the company is looking to locate its third facility."Our investors
are incredibly happy," he said. "We've taken the company from basically
nothing to nearly a hundred million-dollar company in 13 years. So
they're plenty happy."
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