Baker Oil Tools

Reservoir of success

Baker Oil Tools is a division of the respected company Baker Hughes, which operates in over 90 countries serving independent, international and national oil companies.

Baker Hughes’ service network is organised into 23 geomarkets operating in nine regions and two hemispheres. Region and geomarket management teams work to understand customer needs and co-ordinate delivery of individual products and comprehensive service solutions that include the right Baker Hughes technologies for the project.

The Baker Oil Tools product line includes completion, intelligent production and intervention solutions that help manage cost and reduce risk while maximising recovery. The product line provides a comprehensive line of completion systems, which maximise performance and safety from the reservoir to the surface. Production optimisation services include permanent monitoring, chemical automation, and intelligent production systems. Wellbore intervention solutions address issues ranging from temporary well abandonment and fishing to casing exits, wellbore cleaning, and isolation,remediation and stimulation operations.

Maintaining their position at the forefront of the market is a top priority for all divisions of Baker Hughes, and to this end the parent company created ‘The Baker Hughes Core Values and Keys to Success’. The Core Values are: integrity, teamwork, performance, and learning. The Keys to Success are four priorities that should guide decision-making in Baker Hughes: engage people, deliver value, be cost efficient, and resource effectively.

The performance element is important  because Baker Hughes believes it is this that drives the results that differentiate the company from its competitors. A major component of this is Baker Hughes’ continuous focus on finding ways to improve its products, services and processes. This improvement process results in the release of a constant stream of innovative new technologies, all designed to help the customer achieve the best result possible.

A great example of this is Z-Seal Technology. This is an innovative, high expansion seal, which utilises primarily a compliant metal in place of a more traditional elastomeric sealing element to create a pressure seal and subsequently help mitigate many common oilfield problems encountered with the use of more common elastomeric seals.

This allows Baker Hughes the opportunity to take this unique sealing concept and create a product line offering of wellbore isolation bridge plugs and straddles with which to service the oil and gas industries isolation challenges. This will enable the wider industry the opportunity that North Sea operators have had to capitalise on this technology.

Another new solution from Baker Oil Tools is the ConFINE Fines Fixing Agent. This controls movement of formation fines into gravel packs and hydraulic fracture proppant packs. These treatments work by catching and retaining fine formation particles at the point of contact with the gravel or proppant. This action prevents fines from migrating into or through the gravel or proppant pack where plugging could occur near the wellbore or at the sand control screen, if equipped. This offers several advantages, including the fact that nanometer-sized particles do not impede gravel or proppant pack conductivity. Nanoparticles have significant high surface forces to attach themselves to the surface of proppant during fluid pumping treatment. As formation fines move through the ConFINE treated gravel or proppant bed, the surface forces of the nanoparticles capture or fixate the fines to the proppant or gravel, preventing the fines from moving into the proppant pack or gravel pack.

ConFINE treatments do not rely on oily, sticky or tacky filming agents for fines fixation. A special solid material is manufactured to nanometer-particle size and added to fracturing proppant or gravel pack sand on the fly to stabilise formation fines. The nanoparticles have an affinity for proppants and gravels and also maintain an attraction for formation fines, including swelling clays, migrating clays, silicates and other formation fines. ConFINE nano particles have been shown to retain 20 times their weight of simulated formation fines.

As a result of its dedication to innovation and quality, Baker Oil Tools’ products can often be found on major projects. For example, in 2008 the company reported the successful installation of more than two million feet of inflow control completion systems, in more than 20 oil and gas fields around the world. The ‘Equalizer Reservoir Optimized Completion System’ has helped maximise hydrocarbon recovery for numerous worldwide operators. “We are very proud of reaching two million feet in ground with no reported sand control problems. This outstanding track record is made possible through strategic project management and the application of advanced technology – an extended-longevity well screen and a specially designed inflow control device,” commented Brad Baker, director of Sand Control Systems for the Baker Oil Tools.

When you consider its dedication to innovation, its no surprise that Baker Hughes is a world-leading provider of high-performance technology. Virtually every product and service it provides is designed to lower costs, reduce risk or improve productivity during activities directly related to hydrocarbon extraction, advancing reservoir performance – all of which are in great demand by its customers in the global oil and gas industry.

Baker Oil Tools

Industry: Completion, intelligent production and intervention solutions