A pair of custom-engineered vessels from the Petrosmith line. Petrosmith is headquartered in Abilene, Texas.
To adapt an old saying for today’s oilfield service sector, “The more things change—the more things keep changing.” From recognizing a customer need as the gateway to a new service—as one company did—to creating an in-house welding school to train their own workforce—as another did—these are the creative ideas Permian Basin oilfield services companies are using to adapt to an ever-changing landscape.
Salt and Light Energy Equipment LLC started off in 2012 as a provider of wellhead and consumable equipment for the oilfield, said Controller Lisa McCauley. “Our main operation was in Odessa, but we also had locations in South and East Texas.”
In the process, they learned of a number of frac companies that needed flow iron, fluid end equipment, valves, and seats. So they added those items to the inventory they carried. Company owner Shawn Mudigere realized that there was also an opportunity to help on the frac location, so he added fluid end maintenance and power end reviews, McCauley said.
So Salt and Light began sending customers 2-4 crew members on 12-hour rotations “to provide 24/7 fluid end maintenance services,” she said.
The company’s Operations Manager, Ibrahim Khawajah, explains what this entails. A fluid end is a reciprocating pump used in the frac process for its high pressure output. Usually there are about 16 of those pumps on location, mounted on a tractor, along with other heavy equipment such as the engine and transmission and power ends. “Our job is to go in and service those fluid ends whenever there’s a time for a PM coming up, or if there’s a repair needed. That’s our main service.”
The power ends involve the motors and transmissions that drive the fluid ends, he said
Further changes happened during COVID as Salt and Light extended its offering of onsite personnel, said McCauley. They began offering 3-4 people to customers in 12-hour shifts.
Additionally, said McCauley, “We try to become a full partner for the customer. We help with move-overs when they’re going from one frac location to another, so they can do it as speedily as possible because time is money.
“We help out organizing their location, either for equipment or inventory, just trying to help out where we can. For example, if they’re always running low on inventory, it’s one of the things that we do, [as well as] communicate with the customer on what might need to be ordered, what they’re low on.”
Data Analytics: A Powerful Tool
Lisa McCauley
Perhaps their biggest addition has been their fluid end maintenance and data software services, something that Khawajah may have helped open the door for when he worked for a Salt and Light customer, McCauley said.
“He worked with a customer, and they were doing data review on seats and valves. We wanted to have that information for ourselves, so we would know how our equipment was stacking up to others’.” She added, “We realized how important it was, and wanted to be on the cutting edge of that.”
Oil and gas operators hate downtime, so Salt and Light can use this software to help with predictive analysis, she said. “We can offer some advice, like, ‘Hey, this looks like it’s getting ready to wash out, it may need some additional maintenance’ because your sand that’s coming through wasn’t fine enough.” She stressed that the customer decides what to do.
For Khawajah, the goal is clear. “Data analytics is a powerful tool. For us to collect that data accurately and present it to our customers the way the want it [is important].” To tailor the presentation to fit each customer’s needs, he said, “We have custom dashboards for customers, and I’m sure they utilize that data to identify trends, predict equipment failure, and I’m sure they can even optimize resource allocations. But we leave that to them.” Salt and Light crews on site collect data on all maintenance and upload it to their company’s patented app.
McCauley added that most customers do their own maintenance and collect some of their own data. “The piece that we do is that we have noted the parts that have failed, what we’ve replaced in [doing] preventative maintenance, and put that together. We’ve noted with the fluid end service that the fluid end will have additional life with regular maintenance, especially with a professional team maintaining it.” The end user can go to the app and visualize the work done, the parts used, and the date of service, to gauge how long certain parts lasted, helping predict future PM schedules.
Petrosmith
Michael Duffy
Abilene-based Petrosmith has also evolved in recent years to match the changing oil patch landscape, said Michael Duffy, the company’s CEO and president. Through both incremental growth and some acquisitions, Petrosmith has advanced from just manufacturing “to a more turnkey, modular product and full facility work,” he said. “What that means, is a higher level of engineered product that’s like a solutions provider rather than just a fabricator.”
The COVID downturn also created some changes, as it did for most companies that survived that episode. Like Salt and Light, Petrosmith began taking on some of their customers’ work when hands were scarce. During COVID “There was a net drawdown in the number of hands available in the field for traditional oilfield services, so taking some of the work out of the field and putting it into the shops, putting it onto their vendors, like Petrosmith, is one way in which they could combat the net drawdown in resources that were available.”
His company is different from others in the oil patch, Duffy said. “Petrosmith doesn’t see ourselves as a traditional oilfield services company. We don’t run a lot of field crews or field work. We have a small division that does some plugging activities. We really see ourselves as a manufacturer, providing engineering services and engineering solutions that are fabricated tanks and vessels that provide a service for the company.” Really, he asserts, “We’re a product manufacturer that provides a service for those people.”
Over the last 10 years, Duffy observed, tank batteries and pipelines have proliferated, with some producers going to “direct-to-pipeline tankless facilities.” As a result, Petrosmith’s vessel business has grown.
“What that means is, when you bring a new well on you might not need a new battery, but you do need a new separator to run that fluid through, or an additional heater-treater, an additional vessel train. That’s why we’ve done a lot of investing in that segment, both in equipment to produce vessels at a higher rate, as well as a couple of acquisitions that have allowed us to make a higher net number of vessels per month. It’s adapting to where the market was going, so that’s good for the company,” he said.
Petrosmith, formerly known as Smith Pipe, was long known as a pipe supplier. But the company has changed. Says Petrosmith’s Duffy: “We really see ourselves as a manufacturer, providing engineering services and engineering solutions [in the form of] fabricated tanks and vessels.”
School’s In for Welders
Businesses in all sectors are scrambling for trained workers these days, and the oil patch is no exception. Being based in Abilene as Petrosmith is,
away from the Permian Basin hubs of Midland and Odessa, means that finding a supply of workers takes some creativity, Duffy noted. So, “What Petrosmith has done the past couple of years is we implemented a training and welding school to bring candidates in. They might have some welding background from a technical college, they might have some welding experience through some previous employment, but maybe they’re not the level of welder we’re looking for to weld our tanks and vessels.
“So we enroll them in our school and pay them while they’re enrolled in school.” With that plan the students learn in a kind of on-the-job school, learning all types of welding needed for the company. Graduates move up through the ranks as they gain more proficiency.
While a graduate might start in Petrosmith’s structural shop, once he gains proficiency there, the company can move him to other positions in their tank and vessel operation. “So we’re really growing our own workforce and we’re giving people a skill.”
This is followed up with a mentorship program, Duffy said, “where they work for 90 days under somebody, to make sure that they’re not just becoming a good welder, but that they’re becoming a good fabricator, and a good employee for the company.”
He sees the program as a success, having trained more than 70 people through the program in its first 18 months.
For a visitor to the Permian Basin, the landscape seems to be dull and fixed—flat and dusty as far as the eye can see. But for those in the industry, the business landscape develops new hills, valleys, twists, and turns almost daily. Survivors are those like Salt and Light and Petrosmith, who use change to their advantage.
Salt and Light Energy Equipment LLC sends from 2 to 4 crew members to its frac company customers,
where the crew works 12-hour rotations to provide 24/7 fluid end maintenance services.
aul Wiseman writes in the oil and gas sector. His email address is fittoprint414@gmail.com.