2 Pipe Companies with Offices in Marcellus/Utica Merging
Two oil country tubular goods (OCTG) companies, both with operations in the Marcellus/Utica, have announced they will merge. Bourland and Leverich Supply and Pipeco Services will merge to become B&L Pipeco Services. Both companies are subsidiaries of the Japan-based Sumitomo Corporation–one of the world’s largest general trading companies, owning some 800 companies with 70,000 people working for them. What the heck are oil country tubular goods (OCTG)? Pipe and tube products used in drilling–including drill pipe, pipe casings and oil/gas pipes. It certainly makes sense for two different companies in the same business with the same parent to combine…
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Just last week we told you it’s getting so bad out there because of the low price of oil and gas, that even some law firms are closing down. We told you that Burleson LLP, headquartered in Houston but with a sizable office they opened in Pittsburgh six years ago, is shutting down all of their offices, including Pittsburgh (see 
It seems like almost every day we read the “bad news” that more rigs are being laid down in the Marcellus/Utica, and jobs are being lost. We’re in the midst of a vicious down cycle right now in the industry, waiting for light to appear at the end of this long tunnel. So when we spot a story, or press release (in this case) about a company selling to the industry that’s actually expanding rather than contracting, we like to highlight that good news. A company we’d not previously heard of, Inspectorate (aka Bureau Veritas, a French company), announced yesterday they have expanded their offices and laboratories in Linden (NJ), Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Inspectorate is a testing and inspection service for the oil and gas industry. The reason for their expansion in the northeast (and elsewhere in North America) is an uptick in demand for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) testing. Shale gas production drives increased market demand for propane, butane, and ethane, and along with it, the need to test it to ensure and verify quality…
Testing laboratory Exova is a sizable international company with 4,500 workers in 142 locations around the world. Exova, with headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland, has just added its newest testing lab–number 143–in Pittsburgh. The main customer base they’re aiming for in the Pittsburgh region is the Marcellus/Utica industry. A lot of what Excova does is test metals (and other materials) for corrosion and wear and tear. With all of the pipeline work going on in the Marcellus/Utica, it certainly makes sense for Exova to want a piece of that action…
California company Capstone Turbine Corporation, on the left coast, continues to land new sales in the Marcellus/Utica region. We first told you about Capstone selling their microturbine energy systems in 2014 (see 
In September MDN told you that the 711-mile ET Rover Pipeline, costing an estimated $3.7 billion to build, had awarded a contract to an Ohio company to build 39 compressor stations (see 
Hybrid Tool Solutions has just sold itself to a venture capital firm by the name of Hastings Equity Partners for an undisclosed amount of money. Hybrid Tool, headquartered in Oklahoma, has major operations in the Marcellus/Utica. The company has a patent pending, unique process for conducting frac plug drill outs. What the heck is that? Along the horizontal section of an underground bore hole, plugs are inserted every so often in order to wall off a section of the pipe where fracking will be done. The plugs divide the pipe into sections so each section can be worked on separately–starting with the section furthest out (the “toe”). After all sections are fracked, a drill is put down the hole to drill out the frac plugs and release the gas to the wellhead, putting the well into production. It is that process of drilling out the frac plugs that Hybrid performs, having done over 800 wells in the Marcellus/Utica over the past two years. By selling themselves (essentially getting new funding), they plan to expand beyond the northeast into other shale plays…