The Power of Technology to Make a Difference

Q: How significant is the Mexican market to your overall productivity and what are your leading operations here?

A: Our main business line is the provision of pressure pumping and pressure-control products, which includes equipment for well services, including high-pressure, cementing and hydraulic fracturing pumps. We provide everything from the high-pressure pump to the wellhead. Mexico has always been a market with great potential for Weir and we have had operations here since 2008. We have also evolved along with the market and its needs. We increased our presence by opening a new service center in Ciudad del Carmen, to complement our facility in Tabasco. We also have a flexible model, providing onsite services and a fleet of four mobile units that we dispatch around the country, providing cost and flexibility advantages.

Q: What are the main hurdles faced by your customers and how does Weir help them overcome these challenges?

A: Companies need to reduce the total ownership cost of their equipment and this is what Weir has been doing, particularly with unconventional work where pumping is much more demanding and takes more time. We develop specific products to increase the lifespan of our customers’ machinery in these harsh pumping environments. We deployed our RFID technology across all our products to be able to track assets and we introduced a new shale pump, the SPM QEM 3000, that reduces total ownership cost by 17 percent for a single pump and which addresses issues related to pressure pumping in a unified way. We have also been increasing the life cycle for everything related to the pump, from the consumables to the wear life, and we continue to find different ways to add value for our customers.

Another significant need is reducing nonproductive periods and we recently deployed our Weir Edge aftermarket services to tackle this need from three fronts. First, in-field engineers address the root causes on location to change the customers’ experience. Then, specialized field experts make required repairs and finally, our network of strategicallylocated service centers offer support, parts, service and customer training for issues that cannot be resolved onsite.

Q: How does Weir fare against other market players in service provision for the industry?

A: We have an entire portfolio available for our customers and we are at the forefront of unconventional technology as we have invested heavily in that area.

Q: How will the upcoming licensing round on unconventional resources open new business opportunities for Weir?

A: Round 3.3 will be a tremendous opportunity for our partners in Mexico, and we will benefit if they emerge winners. We have also started discussions with them on the differences in the pumping environment, certain key maintenance practices that would be useful for them and how to deploy new technologies that can make them more competitive. A central problem with unconventional field development is how expensive this activity can be and we must work with our customer base to evaluate how to make these projects viable through technology and engineering expertise.

Q: How does Weir add value when working on unconventionals?

A: Mexico is more of an operational expense market rather than a capital expense market. We have already established conversations with some companies about unconventional work, the technologies available for these developments and the ways in which our technologies can be adapted to their own equipment to boost onsite knowledge and reduce costs. One way to become efficient in this segment is to make the equipment last longer and to reduce the nonproductive time on well sites so the equipment can be moved to the next well much faster. Our products and engineering reduce the total cost of ownership. We want to help our clients minimize that downtime on location so they can accelerate their production