Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Companies Fracturing in the Bakken

This video has nothing to with this posting, but I was in the mood to listen to this song, and thought I might as well listen to it while posting.



The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Gene Pitney


Via a comment, I was asked about the names of companies fracturing and completing wells in the Bakken. "Completing" wells is way beyond what I understand in the oil industry, but I thought I might shed some light on the companies that do the fracturing.

For a moment that stopped me, but then this: the EPA asked nine companies to provide the EPA information on hydraulic fracture stimulation. From the EPA website:
On September 9, [2010,] EPA reached out to nine leading national and regional hydraulic fracturing service providers -- BJ Services; Complete Production Services; Halliburton; Key Energy Services; Patterson-UTI; RPC, Inc.; Schlumberger; Superior Well Services; and, Weatherford -- seeking information on the chemical composition of fluids used in the hydraulic fracturing process, data on the impacts of the chemicals on human health and the environment, standard operating procedures at their hydraulic fracturing sites and the locations of sites where fracturing has been conducted. 

Except for Halliburton, the companies have either fully complied with the September 9 request or made unconditional commitments to provide all the information on an expeditious schedule.
While visiting the Bakken the past two years, I have had the opportunity to drive out to the newly expanded Halliburton site east of Williston, as well as the Sanjel operation.  Schlumberger has been in Williston ever since I was old enough to spell "oil."  (I never learned to spell "fracturing" while going to school in Williston.)

As far as I know, those are the big three for fracturing wells in the Bakken: Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Sanjel.

Sanjel: According to one of dozens of stories one can find on the internet regarding Sanjel:
Sanjel Corporation is a privately-owned, Canadian-based international oilfield service company with over two and a half decades of industry experience. As a major competitor in the global oil and gas market and the largest  privately-owned oilfield service company in Canada, Sanjel offers five specialized service lines in acidizing, cementing, coiled tubuing, fracturing and nitrogen - each complete with its own broad range of specialized products and custom-designed and manufactured equipment.
Halliburton:
Halliburton provides a "Fracturing 101" site, as well as a new site listing its fracturing fluids components. I do not know how long this particular site has been up, but Halliburton reminded folks of this website in a press release today (November 16, 2010). Halliburton is headquartered in Houston, TX. If you use the search engine at this blog site you can find how big a player Halliburton is in the Bakken. I have talked about it quite extensively since the beginning of this blog. In fact, its $20 million expansion project east of Williston was one of the reasons I got excited about starting and maintaining the blog.
Schlumberger:
It seems "everyone" has heard of Halliburton but no one has heard of Schlumberger (or how to pronounce it). For me it was just the opposite. I never heard of Halliburton while growing up in Williston, but I knew about Schlumberger from the time I could spell "oil." See above. It is interesting how much notoriety Halliburton seems to attract despite being so much smaller than Halliburton. Halliburton has a $32 billion market cap; Schlumberger is just under $100 billion (had it not been a down day for the market today, SLB probably would have been over $100 billion again, in market cap). When it comes to well completion, SLB is the 800-pound gorilla. A good place to start with Schlumberger, fracturing and well completion is here. Along with Halliburton, Schlumberger Limited is based in Houston, TX.
Baker Hughes:
BHI provides technological support for drillers who require fracture stimulation. They provide impartial advice to drillers contracting other companies actually doing the fracturing. BHI also provides computer modeling for "what-if" scenarios. I see BHI as providing the geeks and the software while others provide the manpower, proppants, trucks, and industrial equipment for hydraulic fracturing.
There are probably dozens of smaller companies that are well-known in other regions or other countries, such as Calfrac Well Services Ltd, a Canadian private company that offers fracture stimulation. But I certainly don't see their names in the Bakken. If I do, I will bring them to your attention.

13 comments:

  1. BJ Services (now owned by Baker Hughes), Superior Well Services (now owned by Nabors), PumpCo and Cal Frac are all fracin in ND. Halliburton has the majority of the work with 10 crews, but BJ is also very busy. Actually all of them are adding crews. Cal Frac was here in 2008 and has just came back within the last month or so.

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  2. Wow, I "love" all you folks who send me comments. Thank you very, very much.

    When I started this blog, I said I probably know less than 1 percent of all there is to know about the Bakken (how wrong I was; I knew even less) and will make lots of errors.

    My site is not very well-researched / very professional, but I think it provides a pretty good overview of what's going on.

    But what I really, really appreciate is folks sending in comments adding to the knowledge base.

    I can't think of a tougher job than frackin' or roughneckin' during a North Dakota winter, and so it's great to see the companies get recognition for being there. I should have known that about BJ Services (I forgot that they were owned by BHI). Interesting about CalFrac being back.

    Thank you again for writing. I truly do appreciate it, especially in areas where I am very weak.

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  3. I'm glad i can add to the posts. My wife gives me a bad time because I check this site all the time. I live and work in Williston in the oil industry and you do a great job of keeping everyone up to date on all news ND. Great site! There's another company to add that is doing some acid work called Journey Energy. I don't much about them but they have brand new orange and black trucks and pumps so they really fit in well with the Williston Coyote colors. They call the parking lot of the Airport Inn home. I was told they moved in to do the acidizing work that the big red machine and the rest of the well servicing companies are letting pass by for the frac work.

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  4. Thank you for your kind comments. That's very interesting about Journey Energy. When I was last in Williston (a couple months ago), I was amazed at all the "mom-and-pop" oil service companies building around Williston -- if you can call multi-million dollar operations "mom-and-pop."

    Very clever about the color scheme. The orange makes them less likely to be shot at during hunting season.

    I think there was a new complex of three motels being built out by the airport when we were there, and, yes, the manager said they rent out the entire motel to different companies. Truly amazing. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if sometime down the road, some company doesn't just acquire the entire motel (outright purchase or long-term lease) and put the name of their oil-service company on the motel's front door.

    Again, thank you for writing. Tell your wife I am sorry. But it could be worse. You could be spending all this time writing the blog. Smile.

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  5. Maybe the reason you are not as familiar with Haliburton is Haliburton did not have a location in Williston back when we were growing up, they were in Tioga and Glendive.

    You are doing a super job keeping us informed about the "Bakken" and related items. I like when you link to the reference information so one can research it if you want more information. I look forward to reading your blog every day.

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  6. how hard is it to get a water haulin job out there. i work the permian basin 30 years ago. is it booming as good as it was in west texas in the late 70s? feel free to contact me lookin for work thanks.. robwbadgley1959@yahoo.com

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  7. Does anyone know how many frac spreads Schlumberger and Sanjel are operating in the Bakken?

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  8. anybody can know where I can find a list of all hydraulic fracturing service providers in north america? Many thanks, Kevin.canawest@gmail.com

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  9. If you are looking for a research project, this might not be the best site, but if you are looking for a fracking job, this link might be helpful:

    http://milliondollarway.blogspot.com/2011/07/top-ten-fracking-companies.html

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  10. looking to offer sand, chemicals, slurry and gel, as well as gel breaker.. any suggestion as to who to contact??

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  11. I would go to this website and contact the folks there:

    http://willistonwire.com

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  12. We are a ceramic proppant manufacturer. Can anyone give some information about the proppant use in ND?
    Thank you.

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  13. We have 2 manufacturing facilities in the Ft. Worth, Texas area where we are building pressure pumping equipment.

    We are building....MOUNTAIN MOVERS, T-BELTS, ACID TRANSPORTS, LIQUID GEL TRANSPORTS..DOT 412, GEL SILOS/TANKS, PRESSURE VESSELS/SILOS...ASME Code Tanks and Non-code, Turn-key BULK CEMENT PLANTS/SAND PLANTS, Refurbish old BULK CEMENT PLANTS, BULK CEMENT TRANSPORTS, BODY LOAD CEMENTERS, SINGLE/TWIN CEMENTERS, FRAC UNITS, KILL TRUCK, BLENDER, ACIDIZER, MUD MIXING SKID UNIT, COIL TUBING ASSIST TRAILER

    Please let us know if we can be of help to you..thank you.

    Brent Ottmers...214-236-6244...Cell

    ReplyDelete

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