Baker Hughes Oilfield Operations Inc

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Houston, Texas-based Baker Hughes Oilfield Operations Inc. (aka Baker Hughes Inc.) (NYSE: BHI), a provider of consulting and services to the oil and natural gas industry, was reported in August, 2008 expanding into Pennsylvania in order to serve the expanding drilling activity there in the Marcellus shale.

As reported in February, 2009, during the spring of 2009, Baker Hughes will begin construction on a new 60,000 square foot, $12 million drilling service center and office located in the Westmoreland Technology Park in Hempfield, Pennsyvania.

According to statements made by company engineering staff, Baker Hughes brings to bear a variety of tools for analysis and interpretation of Marcellus shale and other shale reservoirs. It has an integrated methodology that concentrates on interpreting neutron density and acoustic logs as well as conventional resistivity, Other data used include borehole image logs, geochemical, geomechanical, and magnetic resonance. These various measures are integrated into an array that is studied in the context of the lithology, mechanical properties of the rock, mineralogy, total amount of gas-in-place in the formation as well as organic carbon.

Baker Hughes consults on all aspects of the drilling project including the best way to get the gas out of the ground, which intervals to complete, hydro-fracturing (frac) design and where to place the lateral in horizontal drilling. For example, the geochemical and acoustic logs can tell the analyst where the rock in the formation is the most brittle in order to determine what intervals will be the easiest to frac.

The consultant also tries to understand the porosity by examining the standard logs and the magnetic resonance. The best interval tends to be one where the rock breaks easily, but also has the highest porosity and organic carbon close to the interval to supply the gas.

The overall objective of the study is to find the best interval to complete, or if the well will be a horizontal one, to find the best interval to drill the lateral. The consultant usually makes a graphical presentation of the results and recommendations to a gas company client emphasizing the target rock, any part of the formation that could block a fracture, and which rock to avoid.

In late August, 2009 it was announced that Baker Hughes had acquired BJ Services for $5.5 billion.

In October, 2009, a news account appeared about the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), acting upon complaint, investigating how potentially hazardous chemicals had been stored and disposed of by workers in a Baker Hughes warehouse on Lower Maple Ave. in Chemung County, NY's town of Ashland near the New York - Pennsylvania border. Baker had become owner of the warehouse when it acquired Northeast Mud Services Co. (NEMSCo) of Bridgeport, W.Va. The Maple Ave. facility had formerly been a Box & Moore bakery supply distributorship. NEMSCo had moved there from another facility located about 50 miles south of Coudersport, PA. Schlumberger had also been sharing the warehouse with NEMSCo.

At the time of the above mentioned October report, Baker Hughes/NEMSCo had been in the process of building a secondary confinement area for chemicals that were to be stored outside. The company supplies various chemicals used in drilling fluids such as bactericides, corrosion inhibitors, lubricants and oxides. These are trucked out to area drilling sites in the form of liquids or dry powder. The matter was still pending at the time of this report, and DEC was investigating whether or not any violations had been committed by Baker Hughes.

A news item appeared in June, 2010 about a partnership between Bake Hughes and Honesdale, PA-based Linde Corp., a utility and heavy construction firm, to conduct a $500,000 upgrade of the Carbondale, PA railyard. Linde had leased a 5.5 acre property in the Business Park at Carbondale Yards from the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority. The purpose was to ship in materials for the manufacture of liquid mud by Baker Hughes to use in Marcellus shale drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania. Formerly, the nearest source of liquid mud had been West Virginia, so a significant economic advantage came from setting up a local facility. Linde expected 400 carloads of materials the first year of operatons.

A news item in January, 2011 mentioned that Baker Hughes had started marketing an environmentally friendly fracturing fluid named BJ SmartCare made up of substances used in toothpaste and condiments.

  • Lindsay Link is President of Baker Hughes’ pressure pumping business segment.
  • Gene Shiels is Baker Hughes' Assistant Director of Investor Relations.
  • Duane Sommer is a Senior Petrophysical Engineer with the company.
  • Gary Flaharty is a company spokesman in Ashland, New York.
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