Employees gather in front of the original Weatherford Spring Co. in the early 1940s. (Image courtesy of Weatherford)

When Weatherford Enterra was acquired in 1998, EVI’s management retained the Weatherford name — and for good reason. The company had achieved considerable name recognition over a long and colorful history. The story of the Weatherford name goes back to the town of Weatherford, Texas. In the 1930s and ’40s, the era in which Jess Hall Sr. founded the Weatherford Spring Co., Weatherford, Texas, was the focal point from which the growing oil industry in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and west and south Texas was served.

The original Weatherford Oil Tool Co. was founded to manufacture centralizers and scratchers that were used to perform what was known as the “Weatherford technique,” a process that ensured thorough casing cementation in oil and gas wells. Jess Hall Sr. developed the technique after seeing wells ruined by cement jobs plagued by channeling. Hall reasoned that cement failures could be avoided if the casing were centered in the hole, allowing the cement to form a solid bond completely around the pipe.

From the Texas town of Weatherford, the company took its technology into the world market, a market that was initially rather difficult to crack. Fortunately, the market outlook brightened when the company introduced the first hydraulic casing tong to the European market in mid-1959. Business took off once the tong gained acceptance, and by the 1960s, the company had expanded into Austria, Algeria, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Italy, Libya and Iran.

By the early 1970s, Weatherford Oil Tools had opened additional offices in Singapore and a number of locations around the Persian Gulf. Today, Weatherford employs over 35,500 people in 108 countries. The company has 85 manufacturing plants, 16 training and research and development facilities, and offers 10 service lines.

As the company has grown, it has remained on the lookout for companies to acquire to expand its service offering. Between 1999 and 2001, Weatherford executed more than 135 acquisitions. In fact, since its inception, Weatherford has consolidated more than 270 acquisitions that have dramatically increased the company’s size as well as its portfolio.

The 10 service lines offered by Weatherford today include:

  • Integrated drilling services;
  • Drilling services;
  • Drilling tools;
  • Well construction systems;
  • Re-entry and fishing;
  • Wireline services;
  • Completion tools;
  • Stimulation and chemicals;
  • Artificial lift systems; and
  • Pipeline and specialty services.

“With field economics changing so rapidly, reflecting sudden shifts in supply/demand fundamentals, clients are being forced to confront lower production rates and higher production costs,” said Bernard J. Duroc-Danner, president and chief executive officer of Weatherford International Ltd.

“To offset these penalties, we are working to find better technologies, the highest quality and greater efficiency. Specifically, this means that the company is focusing on drilling and production technologies, especially in the areas of re-entry, multilateral and directional drilling applications, intervention services, formation evaluation, well construction, artificial lift and production optimization. Today, we have the products, service, knowledge and infrastructure to basically provide customers with a complete suite of products and services to initiate, maintain and improve the productivity of their wells,” Duroc-Danner said.

Weatherford strives for efficiency, both in terms of delivering results for its clients as well as leveraging its worldwide infrastructure, Duroc-Danner said. The ultimate goal in both cases is to help reduce costs and increase well productivity in an industry where insignificant spare capacity and accelerating decline rates are critical concerns.

The company’s objectives to 2010 are to pursue aggressive growth in Central Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Eastern Hemisphere markets. The plan is to reduce slightly the revenues generated from North America, somewhat increase those from Latin America, and expand revenues from the Eastern Hemisphere from 39% to 51%.

Weatherford reported a 3Q 2007 income from continuing operations of US $0.85 per diluted share — a record net income for the company and a 27% earnings-per-share increase over the previous year. With this type of performance, the company is in an advantageous position to continue to pursue its global goals.