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The Western Company of North America (1939-1995) was a petroleum industry services company formerly based in Texas. It was one of the pioneers of the "acidizing process," a method of improving the flow from natural gas and oil wells.
In 1939, after working as a Sales Engineer with Reed Roller Bit Company in Houston, Eddie Chiles founded the Western Company of North America in Fort Worth, Texas. He started the company with two trucks and three employees. Western served the petroleum industry with technical services required in the discovery and production of oil and gas.
The company grew to become a major oil services firm, primarily in acidizing, fracturing, and cementing. At its peak, the Western Company had over 5,000 employees and annual worldwide revenues of over $500 million. Western also featured an innovative television campaign with commercials telling viewers "If you don't have an oil well, get one—you'll love doing business with Western!"
The Western Company also operated an offshore drilling company, run by Chiles' brother, during the 1970s. The offshore drilling company was sold to Noble Drilling in 1991.
The Western Company moved from Fort Worth to Houston in 1990. The company featured an innovative oil museum open to the public on the first floor of their office building in Fort Worth, which was moved to Beaumont, Texas.
The Western Company of North America was sold to BJ Services in 1995. The founder of the company, Eddie Chiles, died in 1993.
Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation. One of the world's largest oil field service companies, it has operations in more than 70 countries. It owns hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands, and divisions worldwide and employs approximately 55,000 people.
Schlumberger Limited is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger employees represent more than 140 nationalities working in more than 120 countries. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague.
Baker Hughes Company is an American international industrial service company and one of the world's largest oil field services companies. The company provides the oil and gas industry with products and services for oil drilling, formation evaluation, completion, production and reservoir consulting. Baker Hughes is organized in Delaware and headquartered in Houston. The company was originally known as Baker Hughes Incorporated until 2017 when it was merged with GE Oil and Gas to become Baker Hughes, a GE Company (BHGE), then in 2019 the company divested from General Electric and became Baker Hughes Company. As of September 2020, GE is no longer majority owner of Baker Hughes, owning less than 37% and intending to completely divest its ownership stake over the next few years.
Occidental Petroleum Corporation is an American company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration in the United States, the Middle East, and Colombia as well as petrochemical manufacturing in the United States, Canada, and Chile. It is organized in Delaware and headquartered in Houston. The company is ranked 167th on the Fortune 500. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Occidental Petroleum was ranked as the 669th largest public company in the world.
Paul Neal "Red" Adair was an American oil well firefighter. He became notable internationally as an innovator in the highly specialized and hazardous profession of extinguishing and capping oil well blowouts, both land-based and offshore.
Harrell Edmonds "Eddie" Chiles was the founder of the Western Company of North America and an owner of the Texas Rangers. He was also the paternal uncle of actress Lois Chiles.
Sonat, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, was a large Fortune 500 American energy holding company. The company was founded in 1928 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "SNT". Sonat was primarily involved in transmission and marketing natural gas and oil and gas exploration and production. The company was also involved in contract offshore drilling until 1995 when the offshore business became Transocean. In 1999 Sonat merged with El Paso Corporation. The company was headquartered in the AmSouth-Sonat Tower in downtown Birmingham.
Superior Oil Company (1921–1984) was an independent American oil company that is now part of ExxonMobil. Founded in 1921 in Coalinga, California, by William Myron Keck, Superior Oil began as a drilling contracting firm and grew into the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. In 1930 the company was the first to successfully use directional drilling in California. Moving to Houston, Texas, by 1931 the company had wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana and Venezuela. In 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1970s, Superior Oil was involved in the oil shale industry developing the Superior multimineral process. In September 1984 the company, then based in Houston, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobil.
Petroleum production in Canada is a major industry which is important to the economy of North America. Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world and is the world's fourth largest oil producer and fourth largest oil exporter. In 2017 it produced an average of 667,747 cubic metres per day (4.2 Mbbl/d) of crude oil and equivalent. Of that amount, 64% was upgraded and non-upgraded bitumen from oil sands, and the remainder light crude oil, heavy crude oil and natural-gas condensate. Most of Canadian petroleum production is exported, approximately 482,525 cubic metres per day (3 Mbbl/d) in 2015, with almost all of the exports going to the United States. Canada is by far the largest single source of oil imports to the United States, providing 43% of US crude oil imports in 2015.
APA Corporation is the holding company for Apache Corporation, a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It is organized in Delaware and headquartered in Houston. The company is ranked 465th on the Fortune 500.
EOG Resources, Inc. is an American energy company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It is organized in Delaware and headquartered in the Heritage Plaza building in Houston, Texas.
Vetco was established in July 2004 and operated through its subsidiaries Vetco Gray and Vetco Aibel AS. Vetco was the result of a consortium consisting of the private equity firms Candover, 3i and JP Morgan Partners taking over ABB's oil and gas division; ABB Offshore Systems. Vetco was made out of companies that have serviced the upstream oil and gas industry since 1903. These companies are suppliers of products, systems and services for onshore and offshore drilling and production, project management, engineering, procurement and construction services, process systems and equipment, maintenance, modification and operations. Vetco was headquartered in London UK, and employed over 10000 people in more than 30 countries worldwide.
Offshore drilling is a mechanical process where a wellbore is drilled below the seabed. It is typically carried out in order to explore for and subsequently extract petroleum which lies in rock formations beneath the seabed. Most commonly, the term is used to describe drilling activities on the continental shelf, though the term can also be applied to drilling in lakes, inshore waters and inland seas.
Noble Energy, Inc. was a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration headquartered in Houston, Texas. In October 2020, the company was acquired by Chevron Corporation.
Nabors Industries is an American global oil and gas drilling contractor based and headquartered in Houston, Texas. Nabors owns the largest land drilling fleet in the world with approximately 400 rigs in more than 20 countries. Company consists of the following business segments: U.S. Drilling, Canada Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies.
Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico is a major source of oil and natural gas in the United States. The western and central Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, is one of the major petroleum-producing areas of the United States. Oil production from US federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico reached an all-time annual high of 1.65 million barrels per day in 2017. Oil production is expected to continue the upward trend in 2018 and 2019, based on ten new oil fields which are planned to start production in those years. According to the Energy Information Administration, "Gulf of Mexico federal offshore oil production accounts for 17% of total U.S. crude oil production and federal offshore natural gas production in the Gulf accounts for 5% of total U.S. dry production."
The Oil & Gas Journal is a leading petroleum industry weekly publication with a worldwide coverage. It is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the journal has a major presence in Houston, Texas. The journal is published by Endeavor Business Media. Its publisher is Paul Westervelt, and editor is Bob Tippee. The first issue was published in 1902. Its online information services started in 1994.
Cameron International Corporation though now operating under Schlumberger, is a global provider of pressure control, production, processing, and flow control systems as well as project management and aftermarket services for the oil and gas and process industries. Cameron was acquired by Schlumberger (SLB) in 2016, and now operates as 'Cameron, a Schlumberger Company.' At the start of the SLB acquisition in 2015, Cameron employed approximately 23,000 people and delivered $9.8 billion in revenue.
Sapura Energy Berhad is a Malaysian integrated oil and gas services company based in Seri Kembangan, Selangor. Sapura Energy trades in over 20 countries, such as China, Australia, United States of America, and those in Western Africa and the Middle East, employing approximately 13,000 people. Sapura Energy's operations cover exploration, development, production, rejuvenation, decommissioning, and abandonment. The company was formed via a merger between SapuraCrest and Kencana in May 2012 and trades on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad. The company was renamed as Sapura Energy Berhad on March 24, 2017.
