Companies in the news

Vallourec has inaugurated its new premium finishing plant for oil and gas tubes in Damman, Saudi Arabia. The unit is dedicated to heat treatment and threading, for the full range of VAM premium connections, with an annual capacity of 100,000 t. Total investment amounted to approximately $200 million. Vallourec Saudi Arabia will mainly supply Saudi Aramco, along with other regional operators. Elsewhere, Vallourec announced its decision to expand the VAM Connection Technology Center in Aulnoye-Aymeries, France, to double its testing capacity. Amounting to approximately $68.5 million, this investment will create 95 jobs by 2016, with expansion taking place in two stages.

OneSubsea has signed a five-year frame agreement with Woodside to supply subsea equipment and services for developments in offshore Australia. The agreement covers the potential to provide subsea engineering services, subsea production systems and life-of-field services. OneSubsea’s Perth facility, opened in 2013, will provide services to Woodside under this agreement.

Energy production technology services company Proserv has completed its acquisition of engineering firm KRG Industries. Proserv has acquired the entire share capital of the UK-based company from majority shareholder, Japan’s Torishima Pump Mfg. Co. KRG provides precision engineering services to the oil and gas, and aerospace and defense industries. The company provides services, including machining, welding, and inspection and testing, to customers such as oil and gas original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), oilfield service companies and defense contractors.

Oil States International announced that its Canadian subsidiary, PTI Group, has begun construction of a new facility, McClelland Lake Lodge, north of Fort McMurray, in the Athabasca oil sands region of Alberta. PTI will engineer, design, build, own and manage the facility, which will have an initial capacity of 1,561 rooms and potential to reach 1,997 rooms. PTI plans to open the lodge in the summer of 2014, and reach full initial capacity in fourth-quarter 2014. McClelland Lake Lodge will initially support a new oil sands mining project in the region under a three-year contract.

Varel International Energy Services (VIES), the parent company of Varel International and Downhole Products, has agreed to sell the company, in its entirety, to Sandvik. The acquisition price is approximately $740 million. The closing of this acquisition is expected to occur during first-half 2014. Privately held VIES conducts business in more than 60 countries through three operating divisions. Sandvik is a high-technology engineering group featuring advanced products and positions in selected areas. The VIES purchase represents one of the larger acquisitions in Sandvik’s corporate history and, once completed, will be the company’s first major entry into the upstream oil and gas industry.

Enventure said that it has set a world record for the longest  5½-in. SET, solid expandable CHL liner. The liner was installed successfully, with zero recordable safety incidents, for an operator in the Middle East. The record installation was performed in a power water injector well to repair a badly corroded 7-in. liner. To keep the reduction in the well’s internal diameter to a minimum, the operator cleaned out the corroded 7-in. liner and ran a 51/2-in. SET liner. The successful installation provided an internal diameter of 5.570 in., which allows higher injection rates, with less friction loss than any conventional scab liner.

Privately-held Canary, LLC, of Scottsdale, Ariz., will acquire American Wellhead, LLC, a wellhead sales and service company for the Permian basin and New Mexico. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. In January, the company announced its acquisition of St. Louis-based Unitherm Furnaces, an industrial furnace manufacturer. In mid-2009, American Wellhead started renting and installing fracturing equipment for the oil industry.

Deep Casing Tools reports it has set a new world record in Saudi Arabia for the longest tool run. The turbine-powered reaming capability of the Turbocaser Express enabled the new record of 26,318 ft to be reached successfully. Without rotating the string, 2,250 ft of open hole were reamed over a 6-hr. period, successfully completing the longest measured depth section in which Deep Casing Tools has used the Turbocaser Express. The new record also included running the longest 7-in. liner (16,750 ft), to the target depth.

Reamco Inc., an international drilling tool manufacturing, rental and refurbishing provider, has opened a business development office in Aberdeen. The company’s new office will be responsible for business development in the North Sea, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Tasked with developing the Aberdeen office, Jamie Shepherd joins Reamco with nearly 40 years of experience in oil and gas.

Circulation Solutions, a drilling and completion products firm specializing in lost circulation and other completion problems, recently acquired the assets and intellectual property of RAMP Chemicals, based in Laredo, Texas. The acquisition, which finalized in fourth-quarter 2013, launched Circulation Solutions’ North American and international expansion plans. Additionally, Circulation Solutions identified new methods, used by RAMP for lost-circulation material (LCM) and wellbore integrity problems. The acquisition includes RAMP’s signature product, MultiSqueeze, a chemical blend of customized lost circulation materials that forms a solid seal in the loss zone.

Packers Plus Energy Services, an open-hole, multi-stage completions systems specialist, has acquired Texas-based companies Eagle Downhole Solutions and CMC Machine Works. Operating out of Conroe, Texas, Eagle Downhole Solutions provides downhole tools and product development solutions to solve completion and production issues in shale field development. The company is the creator of the E-Pak ESP Packer, a specialty completion tool designed to protect casing from high levels of sour gas. Conroe-based CMC Machine Works offers high-end manufacturing and machining services.

TGS has signed a Letter of Award with WesternGeco to charter the high-capacity, 12-streamer vessel M/V Geco Eagle for 3D, multi-client projects in Northwest Europe during the 2014 summer season. The charter will begin on or before April 1, and will last for three months, with an option to extend for a further three-month period. This charter replaces a six-month option for another 3D vessel that will not be used. TGS also signed a Letter of Award with SMNG to charter the vessel M/V Akademik Shatskiy for 2D, multi-client projects.  This six-month charter will commence April 1.

The Oilfield Technology Group (OTG) of Momentive Specialty Chemicals has opened a new transload facility to provide resin-coated proppants to fracturing service companies and operators. The latest transload, in Odessa, Texas, is centrally located in the Permian basin. In other news, the company has completed the acquisition of a resin-coated proppants manufacturing facility in Shreveport, La., from CRS Proppants. The Shreveport facility has annual capacity of approximately 450 million lb, and will continue to source Northern White frac sand from CRS Proppants.

Tejas Tubular Products, a Texas-based oil country tubular goods (OCTG) manufacturer, has recently expanded to the greater Norfolk, Nebraska, area. Tejas will build a 350,000-sq-ft Madison County facility to supply more than 150,000 t of steel products, including casing, drill pipe and line pipe for oil and gas production.

Hornbeck Offshore Services recently configured the HOS Achiever to provide large-scale offshore accommodation services. The DP-3 vessel now features berthing for nearly 267 persons, and an active motion-compensated gangway for safe, easy access to offshore installations. The vessel offers active and passive roll damping. Other features include a Sikorsky-92 rated helideck, helicopter re-fueling capabilities, and a 160-Mt crane.