Vendors Market Their Products to Shale Industry
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – By month’s end, Savage Services’ operations at the Ohio Commerce Park in Lordstown should be up and running, making the Salt Lake City company one of many to set up shop here as the shale industry gears up in the Mahoning Valley.
Savage Services, which in June announced it would be locating operations at Ohio Commerce Park, is the contracted transload operator at the site, says Matt McComber, operations manager. From there, Savage will supply sand for the hydraulic fracturing process as well as other chemicals used by the oil and gas industry “and potentially any other industries in the area that need to get chemicals or other bulk products in by rail and loaded onto truck or loaded onto rail for distribution,” he said.
Chuck Joseph, broker/owner at Routh Hurlbert Real Estate, Warren, the leasing agent for Ohio Commerce Park, describes the industrial park as “like one-shopping.” The park spans 500 acres and the site is served by CSX. “Hopefully we’ll have another Class 1 [rail line] on site,” he said.
Halcon Resources Corp. of Houston is working with the Ohio Commerce Center to develop a $70 million oil storage and rail loading terminal there (READ STORY).
Savage Services and the Ohio Commerce Center were among dozens of exhibitors – from tool and equipment suppliers and contractors to financial services companies and architects – who sought to capitalize Thursday on the region’s growing oil and gas industry at the Youngstown Ohio Utica Natural Gas Conference and Expo.
Many of the exhibitors remarked that the industry remains in its infancy in the region.
Savage Services’ McComber expects Ohio Commerce Park in particular and the oil and gas industry in general to “just explode” as more wells come online.
“Once the wells start coming alive, there’s going to be a need to get that oil to market somewhere, and that’s where rail will play a vital role. The existing pipelines won’t have sufficient capacity, so there’s going to be a real need for the oil to get on the rail,” he said.
“When they’re drilling, they also need chemicals and rail tracks don’t go to every drill site. So we’ve got to get those chemicals in by rail and then onto truck, then truck to the well sites. That’s where we come in.”
Bunky Jordan, sales and marketing representative for H&H Enterprises, Andover, says his company is “very busy doing a lot of work in the Utica.”
H&H Enterprises does horizontal drilling for the utility industry, installing everything from large pipelines to fiber optics. “With the wells starting to come on line, that’s usually when our industry picks up,” he said.
“We have seen quite a bit of growth in Carrollton but we are now seeing it hit in the Mahoning Valley,” reported Scott Miller, construction specialist with Airgas USA’s Youngstown office. “We see companies coming into the market from Louisiana and Texas to make this a regional hub of activity and production.”
The conference and expo provided local companies such as Evets Oil and Gas Construction, Girard, “an opportunity to bring themselves to the players coming in for the Utica shale such as the Chesapeakes, the BPs and the Shells,” remarked Adam Davis, director of design and drafting for VEC Inc., Evets’ parent. “Having an exposure and a presence here at the conference helps us.”
Evets’ goals at the conference were to network, sell its services and “have people understand that we do a lot more than we did 20 years ago," Davis said. “We’ve grown with the oil and gas market,” he explained. “We now are doing general contracting in the oil and gas arena, and we have a lot of additional services that we offer.” They include site work, concrete, electrical, mechanical, piping and design assist capabilities, he said.
Davis sees activity centered in a 10- to 15-mile radius from VEC’s Tibbetts Wick Road location. “That’s where the wet gas has been found to be the strongest in the Utica shale play, basically running north and south parallel to [Route] 193,” he explained.
Customers for FR Clothes and More, based in Hanoverton, “are coming from all over,” reported Deborah Hill, CEO. That includes from Carroll, Columbiana and even Trumbull counties, she says. The company provides fire-resistant clothes and accessories. It’s located near the new gas processing plant in Kensington.
“We see a lot of traffic from that,” Hill said.
Like many of the companies exhibiting at the conference, Pipe Valves Inc., a Columbus distributor of pipes, valves and fittings, used the event to spread the word that it is providing services to the Utica shale region. “We’ve been involved with valve actuation with several companies,” said Joe Jacob, president. “We’re more or less gearing up for the demand.”
“We see potential for a lot of work coming up in this area,” added Phil Randall, superintendent with Precision Pipeline LLC of Eau Claire, Wis. “This is where the market is going to be, this eastern region over here.” Precision Pipeline lays pipeline, from preparing the right-of-way to cleanup.
Thea Martin, a Youngstown native, is a principal with Desmone & Associates Architects, a Pittsburgh architectural firm focusing on the oil and gas industry.
“We’ve done building for the Marcellus shale industry,” including a warehouse for oilfield services company Baker Hughes Inc., Martin said. “Direct Energy is a big client of ours, and we’re looking to come to Youngstown because this is my hometown.”
Martin said she left the area with the downturn of the steel industry during the 1980s. “I’m looking forward to being part of the revitalization here,” she said. The oil and gas industry “seems as though it will be as big as the steel industry.”
The expo provided a venue for APV Nano Fusing LLC, a sister company of Akron-based APV Engineered Coatings, to showcase its new product, an epoxy protective coating for the interior and exterior of steel tubing and pipes. “We are launching it today at the show,” said Erin Brown, marketing director.
The epoxy incorporates carbon nanotubes that add strength and decrease the weight of a product. Because it is conductive, “It helps with the curing process with different materials,” Brown said. “The coating lasts longer than typical epoxies they use and it’s extremely abrasion resistant.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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