The second annual Energy Excellence Awards (EEAs) program, presented by the Daily Oil Bulletin, uniquely recognizes energy excellence and focuses on the advancement of collaboration within Canada’s energy industry.

For 2020, the DOB received close to 90 nominations in four broad awards categories — Project Execution Excellence; Innovation & Technology Excellence; Environmental Excellence; and Exporting Excellence — recognizing work completed last year. The nominees were further broken down into 12 subcategories across the four groupings, before being judged by a committee of industry leaders.

In the following days we will present the champions in each subcategory. Today, we feature the champion in Exporting Excellence in the subcategory of Oilfield and Professional Services.

The Champions stories are compiled here, and access all the Finalists stories here.

Champion Announcement Podcast: Listen to our podcast announcing the champion of this subcategory and a panel discussion on what makes the organizations within this category and their approaches to new market expansions true demonstrations of excellence. The panel also speaks to what businesses need to continue to do, or perhaps start to do, to ensure exporting excellence tomorrow.

Leading the discussion is Wendy Ell, director of strategic partnerships and industry development for Glacier Resource Innovation Group, which publishes the DOB. Joining her is Tim Hazlett, a global energy solutions leader; Bemal Mehta, senior vice-president of energy and mining intelligence with Glacier Resource Innovation Group; as well as David Nygaard, global trade director, energy at Export Development Canada (EDC).

Click here to listen.

In the highly competitive downhole tool manufacturing business, companies need to stand out among the competition to thrive in their home markets, let alone on the international front.

In crafting a rapid-response method of multistage fracturing tools development and delivery, Steelhaus Technologies Inc. has found success on both counts, experiencing 25 per cent growth in exports in 2019, earning it the Exporting Excellence Award in exporting oilfield and professional services.

A vertically integrated supplier of innovative completion tool technologies, the company’s main focus is on providing an integrated line of completion tool technologies to the world’s leading energy service providers, with specialties in multi-stage stimulation and sand flow control for extended reach horizontals.

Some 80 per cent of company revenue is generated from primary and thermal well completions equipment, coil and ball drop fracturing technology, degradable and perforating fracturing plugs, along with fully integrated manufacturing.

Steelhaus offers added value by combining advanced tooling technology with rapid response product development, rapid-prototyping and proof-of-concept, testing and delivery. Its commercialization process has resulted in an extensive portfolio of tools, and made Steelhaus one of the fastest growing energy service companies in North America.

Extensive testing ensures its products work in the field with a 99.5 per cent success rate. The company has invested in and secured its supply chain to the point where it is able to prototype tools within 24 hours to keep its testing process on track. “Our supply partners share in our culture and mindset of efficiency, enabling us to reduce manufacturing costs and compress delivery times, while maintaining a high-quality end product,” it said.

Its commercialization process includes marketing, sales and operations to support global product launches to ensure the greatest impact, the company said. “Successful product roll-out requires all three aspects working in concert. By properly communicating the offering with marketing strategies and messaging, providing dedicated sales resources to bring the product to major service company partners and achieving successful field trials, we have shortened the time to market.”

The Calgary-based company established in 2008 conducts business from a combined five facilities with over 130,000 square feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing and testing resources. With operations in 23 countries, its primary markets are found in the Middle East, Russia, Kazakhstan, the U.S., Argentina and Canada, which account for over 60 per cent of Steelhaus business.

As recently as the first quarter of 2018, Steelhaus operated from an 11,000 square foot facility with a total of 28 fulltime staff. “The development of a vertically integrated supply chain has provided an exceptionally fertile growth environment, allowing massive expansion to over 170 full-time staff with a total of 130,000 square feet of production power in less than two years,” the company said.

Steelhaus has formed unique partnerships through its Business to Business initiative with energy service companies, with its main partners being Exact Oil Tools, Tier 1 Energy Solutions, Wellfirst LP and Schlumberger. Amid uncertain times within the Canadian oil and gas sector, its partnership with Schlumberger has allowed it to “reach the international market on a grand scale,” Steelhaus said. In 2019 it expanded into Tunisia, Libya, Nigeria, Bahrain, Oman, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Malaysia, Angola and Cuba.

Steelhaus provides engineered solutions for all methods of multistage fracturing stimulation, from plug and perf to coil fracturing. These include innovations such as multi-position coil activated frac sleeves that provide full profile control, re-fracturing, formation curing and the conversion of wells to water injectors.

Its success on the world stage can be attributed to development of technologies at home. For example, Steelhaus announced the successful deployment of over 3,000 stages of Precision Multi-Cycle Frac sleeves in the Cardium play through the first half of 2018.

Its Precision CT Shiftable Frac Sleeve is typically run in pinpoint cemented applications as in the Cardium but may also be run in openhole completions. With increasingly longer wells, high stage counts and two-mile laterals becoming common, the Precision CT System really shines, the company said.

“Typically running 80 plus stages in one-mile horizontal wells and 160 plus in two mile laterals, these re-closable sleeves allow the operator peace of mind in operations where complete profile control is essential. Operators experiencing flow-back issues which have become prevalent in reservoirs such as the Cardium may run open/frac/close operations as required to minimize disruptions.”

An extremely short sleeve length with no requirement for pup joints means operators were realizing substantial cost savings using its Precision technology, Steelhaus said.

The deployment of the company’s BigBore dissolvable plug, which features a larger diameter and higher pressure and temperature ratings in addition to patented anti-preset technology, also exceeded all expectations in functionality and market penetration.

“Proprietary geometry, minimal total mass (+/- 5 pounds) and advanced metallurgical alloy allows full dissolution of the plug, allowing producers to achieve flowback in a fraction of the time it takes conventional degradable plug technologies. Producers have reported mill out requirements are essentially non-existent due to the rapid dissolution of the plugs proving the advanced characteristics of the dissolvable alloy,” said Steelhaus.

Through the rapid development and delivery of such technologies, Steelhaus has put a Canadian fingerprint on specialized tools and equipment now used around the world.

The Champion Series is brought to you by Fluor Canada, our Gold Sponsor, and Spartan Controls, our Silver Sponsor.

Fluor Canada: Since 1949, Fluor Canada has been involved in the engineering, procurement and construction of a wide range of energy related projects that are spread across the Canadian landscape. Fluor provides local, regional and international clients with full-service capabilities, which include economic evaluations, conceptual engineering, feasibility studies, program management, detailed engineering, procurement, transportation and logistics, modularization, fabrication, direct-hire construction, construction management, commissioning, start-up, operations and maintenance.

Spartan Controls: Spartan Controls was founded in 1963 and is an employee-owned company with people and infrastructure in 14 towns and cities across Western Canada. Spartan Controls provides a very broad range of industrial automation products & solutions to all the process industries.