One company has manufactured pumping units used throughout the Permian Basin. The other is the largest privately-owned pumping unit service company in the Permian Basin.
After working together for years, Apex Group USA and AggieTech Energy Services have announced a strategic partnership.
“Since AggieTech has the largest service infrastructure, we’re bringing our equipment to the Permian Basin through AggieTech,” Wesley Armstrong, Apex Group USA chief executive officer, told the Reporter-Telegram in a telephone interview.
He said the partnership gives both companies a strategic advantage in they will be the only manufacturing and service entities partnered directly together “in this space.”
It means, Armstrong said, lower equipment costs as customers can go directly to the source, as well as superior service and availability.
As a result of formalizing the partnership, Armstrong said Apex will be ramping up its pumping unit inventory coming into the Permian Basin while AggieTech will be expanding its service resources for the expected additional demand.
“We will bring $30 million of equipment into the Permian Basin,” Armstrong said.
Companywide, he said Apex is seeing activity increase. Last November and December, as the fourth quarter was coming to an end, he said the company saw $20 million in activity as customers sought to exhaust their budgets before the end of the year and any surplus funds went away. He added that typically there is a business lull in January and February, but he has not seen that so far this year.
“November, December, January, we’re seeing equipment move like crazy,” he said.
While the company has been busy with its Permian Basin clients, Armstrong said the Bakken, which he said has been dormant, is getting busy.
As for its pumping technology, “We’re seeing a market for a variety of systems.”
Last year, he said clients were converting their electric submersible pumps to rod lift systems. More of the same is expected this year, he said, but Apex also expects more demand for its larger rod lift units.
“We’re bringing in systems that can be used for the life of a well,” he said. “Instead of transitioning from a submersible pump to a rod lift system, operators can start out with rod lift.”
Noting the trend of operators to bring on new wells with high initial potential rates to boost return on investment, Armstrong said Apex is designing systems to handle those high initial volumes. It will lower costs overall, and operators won’t have to shut in a well to pull the submersible pump and install a rod pump.
Units are also being designed with drive packages that operate with conventional AC induction motors or permanent magnet motors. Other new units marry custom permanent magnet motors with job packages, resulting in as much as a 40 percent increase in efficiency in using electricity.
Most importantly, he said, are efforts to improve safety around the pumping units in the field.
“We’ve had a number of fatalities in the last six months directly related to beam pumping units,” said Armstrong. So the company is looking at its equipment and how to make it safer. The result is designs that take the operator directly out of the line of the equipment.
The design the company came up with is called a crank lock that it is rolling out this year that will take the operator directly out of the line of fire of the unit while reenergizing the equipment.
“It’s been a major focus of a lot of our customers,” Armstrong said.
So committed is Apex to safety for operators that it will provide lock out/tag out training for pumping unit operators “whether they use our equipment or not. The intention is to have a standardized way of working,” he said.
