Business Focus: A big player in mud
Anchor Drilling Fluids USA Inc.
Address: 2431 E. 61st St., Suite 710
Service: Supplier of drilling fluids
Principals: Robert West, CEO; Phil West, president
Web site: www.anchorusa.com
Anchor Drilling Fluids USA Chief Executive Bob West (left) stands with his
son, Phil West, who serves as president, in the company's offices in the
Southern Hills Towers near 61st Street and Lewis Avenue.
Anchor Drilling Fluids offers key product
Bob West and his son Phil are stuck in the mud.
In fact, mud is their specialty.
Their Tulsa-based company, Anchor Drilling Fluids USA Inc., employs some of the best mud engineers in the business.
"The best of the best," said Bob West, the company's CEO.
Drilling mud, or drilling fluid, is the lifeblood of a drilling operation. It not only lubricates and cools the drill bit, it carries the cuttings at the bottom of the hole to the surface and prevents blowouts by stabilizing the pressure in the well.
Anchor Drilling is one of the nation's largest providers of drilling mud.
"We're still trying to grow organically," Bob West said.
With a fleet of trucks and warehouses from Texas to Montana, the company has a presence in almost every major oil and gas play in the nation. Its clients are some of the largest oil and gas producers in the region.
"We're currently focused on the Mid-Continent," said Phil West, the company's president.
Business at Anchor Drilling has doubled since last July, when the Wests purchased the company. The growth stems from increased drilling and Anchor's recent acquisition of Arkansas-based Ozark Mud & Chemical Inc., Bob West said.
Anchor Drilling purchased Ozark to capitalize on development of the Fayetteville Shale, a popular new gas play that several producers are targeting.
"The Fayetteville Shale is brand new," Bob West said. "There's not a lot of expert advice on how to drill the Fayetteville Shale. The more we do it, the better we're going to get."
Producing gas from shale -- a thin, porous rock -- is expensive. But the cost can now be justified because of high gas prices and horizontal drilling technology.
The Fayetteville Shale could generate $5.5 billion for Arkansas' economy through 2008, according to a report released earlier this month by University of Arkansas researchers.
"We see a future for growth in that area," Bob West said.
Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. have acquired the rights to lease several hundred thousand acres in the Fayetteville Shale.
The mud engineer, or drilling fluids engineer, may be the most important job on a drilling rig. Drilling mud represents a sizeable piece of a company's drilling costs. A good mud engineer can keep those costs down by determining the best thickness and chemical composition of the drilling fluid. Bob West said. "He's the one that makes things happen for us."
The father-son team bought Anchor Drilling with financial support from American Capital Strategies Ltd.
"It's something we wanted to do together," said Bob West, who has 40 years of experience owning and managing oil-field service companies.
The hiring of high-quality mud engineers and management was a top priority.
"Our strategy was to go find the best people we could," Bob West said. "That's what drilling fluids are all about -- that engineer in the field who checks that well every day."
Both Wests are graduates of the University of Tulsa. Bob has a degree in petroleum marketing, while Phil has a degree in petroleum engineering and master's degree in business administration.
Russell Ray 581-8380
russell.ray@tulsaworld.com