Specialized Oilfield Products

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SPECIALIZED OILFIELD PRODUCTS GETTING WIRED INTO WIRELINE TECH powered by Inside Oil & Gas insideoilandgas.com

Specialized Oilfield Products was established in 2004 as a joint venture with Canadian manufacturer Lee Specialities, from which it also took its name. A later rebranding would see it become Specialized Oilfield Products, today a leading engineering, designing and manufacturing company for quality wireline and well services equipment for land and offshore operations. Richard Hagan chatted with General Manager Bellatreche Abdelghani who revealed the company’s impressive growth plans.

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SPECIALIZED OILFIELD PRODUCTS I PROFILE

Pr esent in 18 countries, with clients including the so-called ‘big four’, spanning Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Specialized Oilfield Products (SOP) is a key player in the upstream industry.

Pumping out premium products

SOP offers a wide variety of specialised products in even more bespoke packaging. The jewel in the crown of the product range is its wireline units. These are offered in onshore, truck-based packages, and in offshore skid-based pack ages. Its truck units can be built into containerised trucks, crane trucks, integrated trucks and into logging trucks. Its skid-based units, meanwhile, are available as single-drum

s lickline units, single-drum e-line units and double-drum slickline units. Moving on to its mast products, SOP offers a wide range of mast heights ranging from a 40ft mast to a 90ft mast. Two ginpoles are also offered, one 35ft and one 50ft.

Similar to its wireline units, the company’s well head maintenance units are a third category and are also offered i n either skid-based configurations or in truck-mounted units. Finally, SOP offers well service pumping units, once again in either skid-mounted form or as a trailer-mounted unit

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Brokering bespoke

SOP manufactures all of its products inhouse and, according to General Manager Bellatreche Abdelghani, that gives the company a substantial edge over the competition: “Thanks to our large factory and our advanced manufacturing capabilities, we are able to supply bespoke solutions depending on the client’s particular requirements. Our in-house design and engineering team is on hand to develop customised solutions and a bespoke design.”

SOP’s in-house state-of-art engineering capabilities were put to the test with a recent Australian client request for wireline units light enough to be carried by helicopter to an inland facility. Due to the weight limitations inherent to helicopter transport, the

client required the units to be made extra lightweight to enable safe carriage via helicopter. SOP’s teams rose to the occasion and developed a lightweight unit with a high-grade aluminium alloy frame and lighterweight equipment within.

“We have since supplied 45 of these lightweight units to the client,” said Mr Abdelghani. “We are the only company that accepted the challenge of moving these orders from New Guinea and Australia to the middle of a jungle in New Guinea, via helicopter. The project was such a success that the client has already begun talks for more equipment.”

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Electrifying emissions

In the meantime, Mr Abdelghani pointed out that SOP’s in-house teams have been hard at work developing the company’s latest innovation: “As the world focuses increasingly on sustainability and carbon emissions reduction measures, we have developed sophisticated electric motor-based solutions that will allow our clients to move away from dirty diesel-based systems.

“We’re in talks with two big customers already, with a view to providing complete electric systems, including by replacing hydrostatic transmission, rather than diesel-driven systems; and there is huge interest from them in the lower emissions and decreased carbon footprint that this can offer them.”

These efforts align with SOP’s own emissions reduction goals, having committed itself to Euro 6 emissions standards.

Going local

SOP’s manufacturing facility is located in Mussafah in Abu Dhabi and consists of an impressive 45,000-square-foot property boasting two factories, with one dedicated to fabrication and one to final assembly. The two workshops form a production line beginning with fabrication, progressing to assembly and then into final testing and commissioning.

104 highly skilled staff are employed in this large facility.

Thanks to a raft of high-tech machinery that includes modern, sophisticated CNC machines that were installed in 2019, SOP is now able to manufacture as much as 80% of its required components in-house.

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The company’s growth plan for the next five years will see it open another, similarly large and high-tech manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia in 2024. As a result of local content requirements, the new facility will be built within the context of joint ventures with local contractors.

“Saudi Arabia is a huge market and will remain so for the next five years; at least until 2028 and beyond,” said Mr Abdelghani. “The Saudi government requires projects like this to involve local manufacturing, thus increasing in-country value. We are still ironing out the details of the business model for this new facility, but we have already had discussions with local contractors for local content.

“The challenge is that there is a shortage of local contractors with the required skills and assets in Saudi that

will allow us to manufacture

100 per cent of the product there, so the difficulty right now is in developing a business model that accounts for that while still allowing us to serve our clients.”

Setting the standard

With almost 70 years’ worth of accumulated experience within its engineering and design teams, SOP is optimistic about its prospects for the future.

“We’re planning to diversify our product range through increasing our range of pumping, wellhead maintenance units and auxiliary equipment available,” Mr Abdelghani noted. “We believe that we make the best equipment in the market and therefore the bulk of our reinvestment in the business goes into design and engineering.”

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Its strong industry relationships and supply chain logistics will also continue to play a major role in SOP’s success. Despite international supply chain delays, SOP’s in-house manufacturing has ensured that any delays are otherwise softened as much as possible. “We are confident that our strong relationships and local manufacturing will continue to overcome any remaining challenges,” the GM explained.

Concluding the discussion, Mr Abdelghani reflected on the love for the business and the industry shared by himself and his teams: “What excites me about the work we do here is when we deliver a project, and the client is so fully satisfied with everything we’ve done that the client immediately starts discussing further work together.” n

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