Petro-King International Increases Value for Oilfield Technology Service Customers while Increasing Global Reach
Petro-king Oilfield Technology Ltd. is a leading independent China-based provider of high-end technology and oilfield services. Its primary oilfield services include technical consultation, project management, well drilling, completions, stimulation, production enhancement, surface equipment, and well testing. It also provides associated technology.
“We are a global integrated oilfield technology and service company,” says Country Manager – Australia, James Tauchnitz. “What makes us unique is our striving for fit-for-purpose solutions. We're not a company that offers a catalog. We look at what our customers value and try to find solutions to meet those value-driven challenges.”
Headquartered in Shekou of Shenzhen, the coastal oil town in southern China, Petro-king has established its business presence in China, Indonesia, Russia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Australia. Among its major clients are Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC, Shell, BP, Rosneft, ConocoPhillips, CACT Operators Group, DEVON, Fareast, EOG, and Sunwing Energy. In order to provide their customers with more convenient and more thoughtful services, Petro-king has set up fully fledged service bases in major operation areas.
“We're a Chinese-based company, going through a fairly big global expansion into Africa, South East Asia, throughout China, North America, South America, and Australia,” explains Tauchnitz. “So my job is to lead the Australian business. Wherever we extend our company, we still make sure we hold on to the vision and mission of the company. The vision being that we aspire to be the leading oilfield technology provider.”
“We already are global and integrated but we want to be beating the competition every day. Our mission is very simple: to create value for our customers, every day. The day that we stop creating value for our customers is the day we stop creating value for our business. To create value means that we are looking for a solution that doesn't necessarily exist yet. We're not afraid of taking a new trail and testing new ways, processes, technologies, etc., so we can have that competitive advantage,” says Tauchnitz.
Competitive Advantage
A key component of Petro-king’s competitive advantage is their international technical team. Highly professional and dedicated, Petro-king has experts in hydrocarbon exploration evaluation, drilling and completion program design, well engineering, who are not only experienced in coping with tough and complicated problems related to HPHT, high sour gas wells, unconventional resources development and deep-water operations, but also capable of serving offshore and onshore projects. Owing to its widely acclaimed professional services, Petro-king has established long-term partnership with many customers.
With customers and applications in mind, Petro-king keeps learning and improving. It has set up a sound mechanism for assimilation of new technologies and an employee development program, which has laid a solid foundation for its continuous development. More importantly, its customers are assured of sustained and stable technical support.
Petro-king attaches significant importance to safety, the environment and service quality. They have obtained the DNV ISO quality system certification and API Q1 quality system certification to guarantee constant and reliable technical services for its customers.
Integrated Businesses
Compounding the Company’s competitive advantage is the comprehensive integration of Petro-king’s business operations. “If you were to look at the back of my business card, it reads ‘Plan. Drill. Stimulate. Complete. Operate. Optimise.’ These are very broad areas, and the value that we deliver comes in helping integrate each of those services,” says Tauchnitz.
The flagship businesses that represent significant components of Petro-king’s integration are TurboDynamics and Star Petrotech, both out of Singapore, both under the Petro-king Group, but they are branded under their own businesses and they're run as their own entities. “I think firstly, there's a lot to be said about experience,” says Tauchnitz. “In the TurboDynamics business, we likely have more experience in high-speed turbo drills than anybody else globally, including the major oilfield service companies.”
TurboDynamics manufactures and provides high-speed turbo drill services primarily for drilling in high temperature or very abrasive drilling environments, but can also prove to be very cost effective in a wide range of other challenging applications. In this way, TurboDynamics has also established itself in the marketplace as the place to find solutions to time versus depth challenges and problems. In fact, TurboDynamics’ clients have been known to find it hard to believe the time savings provided which are consistently executed right on schedule, sometimes at a fifth of the time required by standard drilling techniques. “For one particular project, when you have a look at the savings for that client alone in just rig time, that was $1.5 million of rig-time savings just based on our high-speed turbine technology. A small piece of a large project really can save a whole load of money and deliver a whole lot of value for clients,” says Tauchnitz.
Star Petrotech is Petro-king’s flagship completion tool shop and manufacturing facility, also headed by very experienced personnel. Their specialty is designing and manufacturing custom tools. Star Petrotech focuses on high-pressure, high-temperature markets. Petro-king’s sister facility in China manufactures complementary tools. “The beauty of that business [Star Petrotech] is they're able to do designs for more low-cost global applications,” says Tauchnitz.
The Company’s capabilities in concert with its high-performance teams create a powerful combination, touting the flexibility to act quickly and make decisions, be creative and innovative. Experience coupled with flexibility in a global capacity tends be a rare commodity, thus creating an additional competitive edge for the Company.
Integrated Project Management
Integrated project management capabilities represent another very powerful and successful part of Petro-king’s business. The Company has been delivering turn-key solutions to clients in China, Iran, Nigeria, Sakhalin Island, Syria and Trinidad.
As an example of this turn-key solution, an operator looking to develop a certain field has the opportunity to approach Petro-king, state their budget, and then have Petro-king hit the ground running, taking care of everything from the geology and geophysics, well planning and design through a fully staged gated process into field execution and production, getting the wells online and handing them back over to the operator; all with a turn-key mentality.
“We are continually assisting, providing our expertise and maintaining that production,” says Tauchnitz. “We have a full turn-key integrated project management team, and we're starting to bring those services into Australia now. This is really going to be a game changing mix for the Australian market that really hasn't seen too much of this before.”
The Petro-king business started out in the oilfield consulting business and grew from 1 to 70 or 80 oilfield consultants. With successes in consulting, customers naturally began inquiring as to whether the Company would also provide services as well. Catalysed by this interest, the Company then started growing their drilling completions for stimulation services. As a result of this, customers then asked about the integration of these offerings, including overall project management, leading to Petro-king delivering the full experience locally for their clients. “We match these teams to organizations, and we're starting to bring those capabilities into Australia now,” says Tauchnitz.
Looking forward, Petro-king remains committed to creating value for its customers and is determined to grow globally into the leading oilfield service company.
