Canyon Oilfield Services
Encouraging oil and natural gas wells to produce more is an evolving art and science that requires constant updating of techniques and methods. Providing production expertise is just one of the many services Canyon Oilfield Services provides. Even though its experts may have one suggestion for helping a well produce, they always adapt and adjust their methods to the preferences of their clients.
“We have such a vast variety of clients we are working for, we have to adapt to what they want us to do,” Canyon Oilfield Services owner and Operations Manager Michael Sloan emphasizes. “There’s a hundred different ways you can plumb a tank. You have to remember your customer may have a way they want to do it differently, but it still works that way. If you feel you can improve the well, present it to them and let them make the decision for you.”
New oilfield service techniques are being developed, Sloan notes. “Production plumbing and production equipment changes constantly, so you have to stay on top of the game and stay up with the knowledge of how to get these wells to produce in an efficient way,” he points out.
Canyon Oilfield Services offers vacuum truck, roustabout, contract pumping and meter tech services. With satellite yards in Sayre and Stillwater, Okla., the company’s service area covers much of western, central and northern Oklahoma, as well as the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. The company’s services include vacuum and gear pumps, lease water hauling, brine water, potassium chloride, fresh water and its own salt water disposal system.
Oil and Gas Awards
Sloan won the 2013 future industry leader Oil and Gas Award for the Midcontinent Region. He founded Canyon Oilfield Services in 2000 and attributes his success to “the simple principles of doing what you say you’re going to do, making sure the job is done correctly and taking pride in your workmanship.
“Service is the key word in our name,” Sloan notes. “There’s a ton of people out there, and if we’re not willing to do a good job, somebody else will. We make it clear to our guys that we’ve got to do it right the first time. If we do, we will get the jobs.”
Sloan’s father was in the oil and gas industry. “I was not raised in it,” he says. “I didn’t work in it at all. I’ve been around it growing up due to my dad working in oil and gas. Oil and gas was an industry I wasn’t going to pursue. It was not an interest to me.”
Instead, he studied criminal justice, provided volunteer legal services and worked as a youth pastor. When at the age of 22 he was presented with an opportunity to start an oil and gas service company in western Oklahoma, he took it. “I’m pretty glad I did,” he says.
“I had to learn everything from the get-go, which was good,” Sloan recalls. “You learn the hard way, which you never forget. We built the company from there, me and three water trucks. After five years, we expanded and added on the roustabout crew and ran about seven water trucks and two roustabout crews. By 2010, we doubled the trucks to about 20 transport trucks and seven roustabout crews and expanded into the meter tech side, automation and the contract pumping side. We’ve just been lucky to have very good employees and have a strong foundation and make sure the foundation stays the same throughout the company.”
Natural Gas
Canyon Oilfield Services is in the process of designing and building natural gas trailers that could operate drilling rigs off of compressed natural gas instead of traditional diesel fuel. The concept is to use the natural gas from a nearby pipeline to drill the well. “What we don’t use we inject back into the pipeline,” Sloan says. “There’s no waste to it at all. If everything goes right, we’ll have eight by the end of the year.” The natural gas also can be obtained from a temporary pipe attached to a pipeline, which could be up to a mile away.
Sloan emphasizes that the quality of Canyon Oilfield Services’ work will keep it prospering. “We have a strong foundation,” he stresses. “Luckily, I was able to work out in the field for many years and still do. I have a foundation of supervisors and managers that try to do it the same way I would do it and do it correctly. I feel very strongly that our workmanship and the way we operate as a company is what is going to sell our work.”