00:00:00 Speaker 1
This episode of The Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar has manufactured engines for drilling, production, well service, and gas compression. With more than 2,100 dealer locations worldwide, Caterpillar offers customers a dedicated support team to assist with their premier power solutions.

00:00:28 Speaker 2
Welcome to The Energy Pipeline Podcast with your host KC Yost. Tune in each week to learn more about industry issues, tools, and resources to streamline and modernize the future of the industry. Whether you work in oil and gas or bring a unique perspective, this podcast is your knowledge transfer hub. Welcome to The Energy Pipeline.

00:00:52 KC Yost
Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Energy Pipeline Podcast. Today we'll be discussing energy production and specifically fluid ends used in well fracking. Our guest is Connor Docherty, product manager at SPM Oil and Gas. Hey, welcome to The Energy Pipeline Podcast, Connor.

00:01:12 Connor Docherty
Yeah. Magic, KC, thank you very much for having me.

00:01:16 KC Yost
Great to have you on. I'm so excited. We discussed this last week, I worked in Houston for a company that was based in Scotland, and we knew to be nice to people with accents like yours as they could actually already be our boss, and we just hadn't been informed. Before we get started on this podcast, you are not my boss, correct?

00:01:37 Connor Docherty
Correct, yeah.

00:01:38 KC Yost
All right.

00:01:39 Connor Docherty
As much as I pretend or like to be, I'm not.

00:01:42 KC Yost
All right, very good. Very good. Well, seriously, so before we start talking about fluid ends, let's take a few minutes if you would share your background and what you do at SPM.

00:01:53 Connor Docherty
Yeah.

00:01:53 KC Yost
Please.

00:01:53 Connor Docherty
Perfect. So yeah, as the accent gives me away, it all started in Scotland where I studied engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. And then I joined the Weir group, who's a pump manufacturing company based out of Glasgow. And from there got the opportunity to move over to SPM in Fort Worth, Texas as an R&D engineer. I came over, worked in R&D for a while exploring new technologies that could be impactful for SPM and for our customers. After some time in R&D, went through and joined the engineering team. Then in the engineering team, took over our consumable suite of products, so that covers valves and seats, plungers and packing. Did a lot of design and development work as well as managing the product day to day from a technical side of things. And then from there moved into product management, which is the position I'm in today. And I work within our pump product management team. And I'm over consumables given my background in engineering, and then also our pump digital products. And then the thing we're here to talk about today, which is fluid ends. And as a product manager with SPM, my main goal within our organization is making sure that the products we provide our customers in the industry today are successful. And making sure that our R& D and our engineering teams and our organization is developing the products that will help our customers and our industry be successful tomorrow.

00:03:30 KC Yost
Excellent. Excellent. How long have you been in the States?

00:03:33 Connor Docherty
So I've been here coming up for about seven years now.

00:03:36 KC Yost
Oh gosh. You're a rocket ship. You're on the fast track it sounds like, moving right up the ladder.

00:03:44 Connor Docherty
Well, yeah, just trying to do the best day to day.

00:03:48 KC Yost
Okay, good, good, good. Have you adjusted to American football yet?

00:03:53 Connor Docherty
I probably understand about 20% of the rules now, which is enough to pretend like I know what I'm talking about when watching it at the bar, but that's about as good as I get. I know the ball needs to go forwards most of the time. And that's about it.

00:04:04 KC Yost
That's the bottom line. That's bottom line. 20% is probably about twice as much as my daughters know about football, so fair enough, fair enough. So anyway, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you here and anxious to talk about fluid ends. So do you have an elevator speech for SPM?

00:04:26 Connor Docherty
Yeah, definitely. So SPM headquartered in Fort Worth. We manufacture equipment for the frack industry. We manufacture everything from the transmission on a trailer all the way to the entry of a wellhead. So we cover both pumps and power ends and fluid ends, as well as all the consumables that go there. But we also make all the flow eye and the valves, the missile equipment, and then also all the equipment at the well face as well. Now we design, we develop, and we manufacture that, but we also have a pretty extensive service network as well that supports our customers who run our equipment. So we have an extensive network in North America. We've got a good presence in South America. And then we also have a good presence through the Middle East and Europe, and then also over in Asia as well. So we've got a good service center network that means while we manufacture very locally in Fort Worth, we support our equipment across the globe.

00:05:32 KC Yost
Excellent, excellent. And the company's been in business 50 years now, is that correct?

00:05:37 Connor Docherty
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So a long, long time. Started out independently owned and then made the name for themselves specifically in manufacturing fluid ends, and then became part of the Weir group. And then since then we became part of the Caterpillar family

00:05:57 KC Yost
Now in North America, I seem to recall seeing on the website that you guys had a lot of, let's call them service shops in the Permian, if you will.

00:06:11 Connor Docherty
Yep.

00:06:11 KC Yost
West Texas, Southeastern New Mexico, that area. A few in the Rockies, had some up in Alberta. I think I saw a couple in Pennsylvania. That type of thing. Do you have anything in south Texas as well?

00:06:24 Connor Docherty
Yeah, we do. We've got a facility down there in Pleasanton, south Texas as well. So really with the distribution of service centers that we have, we're looking to make sure that we're close to the main hubs of activity for all our customers. So when you look at how we're spread, especially across North America, we're looking to be strategically placed so that where there's the most activity, where our customers are using our equipment, we are as close as possible to make sure that we have people and we have parts and we're quick for them to get to and for us to get to them.

00:06:58 KC Yost
So I'm always interested in marketing and how things are distributed. I did pick up on the catchphrase that you're no more than three hours away from any site. There you go. There you go.

00:07:11 Connor Docherty
Defiantly.

00:07:12 KC Yost
It's kind of like delivering a pizza in 30 minutes.

00:07:16 Connor Docherty
Yeah. We won't do it for free, but yeah, that kind of idea.

00:07:20 KC Yost
Yeah. So let's talk about pressure pumps, okay. If you don't mind. When I think of a pump, I think of a housing and a motor and an impeller to push things. And from what I recall in our discussion last week, those types of standard pumps are basically the pumps that are used to take the slurry, the mixture out of frack tanks and get it up to 300 pounds or something like that. And then your pumps have a housing and a motor, maybe you'd rather call it an engine, and then you have these fluid ends. And the fluid ends, if you will, are a liquid version of a natural gas compressor in that it's a piston that drives the pressure up, right? Am I saying all this correctly?

00:08:19 Connor Docherty
Yeah, exactly. So if you think about a frack trailer, we've got our engine, we've got a transmission that come into one of our power ends. We then basically take centrifugal motion and turn it into reciprocating motion, which is where we have our pistons or our plungers as we call them.

00:08:37 KC Yost
Plungers?

00:08:38 Connor Docherty
Those plungers, yeah, go in and out of our fluid end. And our fluid end responsibility's for taking low pressure through the bottom, through our manifold. We then compress it with our plunger in the kind of central chamber, and then we expel high pressure frack fluid out of the top, which we call our discharge line. So we take pressures anywhere from 100 to 300 PSI, and we pump them out anywhere from the lowest. Sometimes we do in a general frack job, might be down at 6,500, 7,000 PSI, and then we go all the way up to 13,000 PSI is some common ranges for operating. So we turn not much pressure into a hell of a lot of pressure.

00:09:21 KC Yost
You do, you do, you do. And when we visited, I think I mentioned to you that I'd done some tertiary recovery with CO2. And I was very excited about that because we were injecting the CO2 at 3000 pounds and I thought that was amazingly high. And then we started talking, well, you're at 6,000 pounds minimum, but it makes perfect sense because after all the CO2 was trying to do was get into the cracks and force the oil over to another well. As compared to you guys, you're making cracks.

00:09:56 Connor Docherty
Yeah, exactly.

00:10:01 KC Yost
It's kind of like a David and Goliath type thing. I'm using these puny pressures, and you guys are at minimum twice the pressures that I've ever dealt with in my 50 year career. So hats off to you guys. That's amazing. That's amazing.

00:10:17 Connor Docherty
Yeah. You want to see a frack ou puff out his chest, just ask him what pressures he's pumping out and they'll be very happy and quick to tell you.

00:10:27 KC Yost
Yeah. Well, it's humbling to me. I've never dealt with pressures like this. So let's get into this. How are pressure pumps operating today?

00:10:38 Connor Docherty
Yeah. So I mean we've seen a continuing trend with pressure pumps and then with the people that operate them where they're trying to do more with less. What I mean by that is they're trying to have higher pressures, pump more fluid, frack longer stages, frack more stages, frack bigger jobs with less equipment. And that coming from more diligently managed budgets, more improvements operationally, and then looking to push us as OEMs to provide equipment that will allow them to do that as well. So that's coming from not just the bigger jobs they're trying to do or the more jobs they're trying to do simultaneously with things like Simul-frac, but also looking to use higher horsepower engines and motors and generation systems on the back to try and have less pumps with bigger output. So it's all about, for our operators that's trickling down from their requirement, trickling down to the pressure pumps themselves is how can we do more with less.

00:11:49 KC Yost
More with less, more with less. I'm hearing that throughout the energy industry, more with less. So I can understand the pressure that you guys are under to try and deliver that type of thing. So when we talked last week, you were using the phrase continuous duty operation.

00:12:07 Connor Docherty
Yep.

00:12:07 KC Yost
And so there got to be a lot of demands on that. So how do those demands affect the operating place on the work site?

00:12:19 Connor Docherty
Yeah. So the challenges that that brings now, continuous duty brings one thing where we're looking to continuously be applying pressure and load. But what that means for our equipment, like I just talked about there with our pressure pumpers how they want to operate more with less with a continuous duty operation, it really means that our equipment needs to be able to handle a much bigger range of operating conditions with the same equipment being able to perform one job up at 12,000 PSI, the next job at 9,000 PSI with flow rates varying from five barrels per minute to 15 barrels per minute. And that equipment needs to be able to handle all that day after day, job after job with continuous duty and still be reliable and perform and help our customers meet their objectives and deliver on the performance that our equipment wants to do. So yeah, all these trends within the industry, this continuous duty is all driving down to the equipment where the equipment needs to be reliable, but also needs to be extremely flexible and versatile as well. Which provides a unique challenge for all OEMs in the industry, and SPM is one of them.

00:13:43 KC Yost
It sounds like your clients are asking you to be all things to all people.

00:13:50 Connor Docherty
Yeah. And one of the biggest and most interesting and funnest challenges about working within the frack industry is very much nail on the head there, KC, which is they want one solution that will do everything. I think if you look at some other industries, you might have a product breakdown based on type of media or pressure range or location or slurry type, or everything like that. But in the frack industry now we have some segmentation based on horsepower, but it's really I want my high horsepower to be able to go from 3,000 to 5,000 and I don't want to blink an eye. And then with the 2, 500 horsepower range, I want it to be able to handle pressures from 6 to 12, and I want to do it day after day no matter where I'm pumping or what I'm doing. So designing product for that level of variability and flexibility obviously comes with some, keeps the engineers busy and keeps them happy as well trying to design for everything.

00:14:59 KC Yost
Good, good, good. So with all of this going on and this continuous duty operation, you've got these fluid ends that are essentially, again you call them plungers, I think of them as pistons but again plungers, that are going all the time. So how does this continuous duty operation impact these fluid ends? Because you've got this gritty fluid that you're compressing constantly. It's got to be really hard on them.

00:15:36 Connor Docherty
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the thing there's a few challenges within a frack application when it comes to fluid end, you've got pressure, you've got abrasion, you've got corrosion, and you've got erosion. They're the four things that will all impact the longevity of a fluid end. And they affect the fluid end in very different ways. Some will impact the sealing surfaces of your fluid end, some will impact the material in the chamber, some will impact both aspects like corrosion effect both your seal and your base material. But each of them all work in coalition to make the conditions as demanding as they are within a frack application, which is where we really need to continue taking the step above the development, the R&D, the engineering work to design our product to handle all of these destructive forces within the operation. And as I mentioned earlier, our customers are trying to do more with less. And they're also trying to increase the severity of those factors when it comes to higher rates, which means more cycles per minute. Or it's more fluid, which means more abrasion and more sand, more abrasion and more erosion. Or they're trying to pump harsher chemicals, which means more corrosion. So as where all of those factors affect the longevity, the industry's telling us we need to be able to handle them more and more and more as well. So all of that can really impact the life and reliability for fluid end, and it's where us at SPM are continuously designing and developing product to handle not just what it does today, but knowing that our customers want more and they're going to want it soon.

00:17:27 KC Yost
So it becomes critical to invest in the longevity, you mentioned the longevity of the fluid end. So talk to us about that investment that people are making.

00:17:43 Connor Docherty
Yeah. So I think when you talk about longevity, there's a few things that's important for our customers when it comes to longevity. And everything we do is with the customer in mind, so there's three things that always jump to my mind when I think about why is it critical to promote the longevity of a fluid end. The first is the job efficiency. So our customers want to make sure that they complete and frack their job as quickly and as efficiently as possible. There's the resource management aspect of that as well. Now, the reason I say the resource management is if you have an issue with a fluid end, it's not a quick change to pull off an old fluid end and put on a new one. Lots of times if you're going to do it safely, that means pulling the trailer out of line, that means you are moving it to either a staging pad or a yard and then bringing in the cranes and the people to do that, and then bringing it back before you inaudible again. And then both that job efficiency and that resource management all boil down to kind of the financial aspect of longevity for fluid end. So if our customer's investing in an SPM fluid end, we want to make sure he's getting the most life out. Which means he's got as much uptime as he can to make sure his job's running on time, ahead of time continuously as he needs. But then also his people aren't focusing on replacing fluid ends, but they're focusing on other aspects to make sure that that job gets finished. And that all boils down to a customer making profit per well per job. And that's what our goal is. Our goal is to provide equipment that allows our customers to be successful in what they're doing. So when we talk about longevity, longevity of the fluid end is there to promote those three aspects for our customers.

00:19:29 KC Yost
So you're actually becoming a team, you and your customers. A team to find that optimum point where the fluid end is always operating when it needs to operate. But when it's down, it's put into condition so it's ready to operate 100% next job. Boiling it down for a pipeline engineer, making it simple.

00:19:59 Connor Docherty
Yeah. No, nail on the head. I mean, our job is to provide equipment that will provide uptime as long as they can. That means they're constantly pumping. I mean, we want to be a piece of the puzzle that's reliable, providing longevity, that means they can hit that goal. So yeah, you're exactly right there, that is our objective. And the more we can be a partner and be a resource and an ally for our customers, then the better for us because we're doing our job correctly and we're providing equipment that means our customers are successful, which is ultimately the goal.

00:20:37 KC Yost
And obviously you're doing something right if you've been in business for 50 years.

00:20:41 Connor Docherty
Yeah.

00:20:41 KC Yost
So hats off to you. So you talked about replacing fluid ends and needing to possibly pull the trailer out and set it aside, do some work, this and the other because it's not like a plug and play where you can just bring another and plug it in and make it work and all of this kind of stuff. There's an effort there. Are there other considerations that you didn't mention that they need to keep in mind when replacing the fluid ends?

00:21:08 Connor Docherty
Yeah. So when I talk about replacing a fluid end and the fluid ends that our customers use and what they focus on within their decision making. The first one, and we call it TCO, total cost of ownership.

00:21:23 KC Yost
TCO?

00:21:23 Connor Docherty
Yeah, TCO.

00:21:27 KC Yost
Okay.

00:21:27 Connor Docherty
Total cost of ownership.

00:21:29 KC Yost
Got it.

00:21:29 Connor Docherty
Now for us and for our customers, that can mean a couple of things. The first one is really a simple dollar per hour. How much do I pay for my fluid end and how long does it last for me and how much do I pay per hour operation? Some customers take that and then they also add in the maintenance time saved and some of that resource management that I talked about as well. But really all boils down to what we call in here as TCO, but really dollar per hour for our customer. So what they getting back for each dollar invested in our equipment. And then as you mentioned as well, KC, and as we talked about, there's that kind of serviceability side of it as well. So it's do I have a fluid end that's priced correctly that lasts the right amount of time? As you talked about, that gives me a good dollar per hour. But when I do need to work on it, and you always need to work on fluid ends, whether it's changing valves in seat, so packing or plungers or as you say, swinging them off and swinging a new one on, it's how easy are they to manage and handle. That comes down to not just the design, but also the tooling that's available and that we provide. And then lastly for me, which is what we talked about a wee bit earlier when we said we're no more than three hours away from our customers and we've got this diverse network of our service organization, but it's also the service that a fluid end provider provides the customer beyond just the point of sale. And that's where SPM has industry-leading products that are pushing life and serviceability. But where we, I believe, really kind of take an even further step ahead is that we've got this service center network local to the customer. We've got a team here in Fort Worth, whether it's the engineers or our field product support team. That means we provide the service and support beyond the point of sale, good and bad, to make sure that our customers are successful. And I think that's where you talk about 50 years and why we've been successful that time is beyond the point of sale, we are a partner with our customer to make sure that they're getting the most out of SPM equipment to hit their goals. So I think those three aspects, TCO, serviceability, then after sales support are kind of three key considerations when someone is looking to not just buy a fluid end but partner with a company who can provide a fluid end.

00:24:02 KC Yost
Sure, sure. It makes perfect sense. And at the end of the day, it does come down to economics is what you've been talking about. So you have the initial cost, the CapEx if you will, and then you have the OpEx cost to keep things going. And sometimes people are willing to... Well, I'm 70, right? So I look for convenience. I don't mind spending an extra few bucks so I don't have to worry about something breaking down a year from now or two years from now. And I'm sure you have those conversations with your customers all the time, right?

00:24:45 Connor Docherty
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the frack industry is an incredible one because it's so dynamic. But things go well and things sometimes don't go to plan, and having someone there that you can pick up the phone and call and say, "Hey, look, I'm having this problem", or "Hey, look, this is going well, can you help me understand why?" I think that makes a real difference for our customers, making sure that they're successful in the job now, they're going to be better in the job tomorrow. Their teams are getting more educated and better and more efficient. And SPM's fantastic when it comes to providing the after-market support. And as you said, you want that convenience, that reliability, that safety net to say I've bought something now I want to make sure that I'm going to get the most out of it, and I want someone I can pick up the phone or is going to come and visit me at site or is going to bring me to their facility and is going to educate me, support me, and give me critical pieces of product information that will help make my life better in the short term and the long term.

00:25:49 KC Yost
So do you have these discussions with your customers when it comes to maintenance protocols and service techniques and all of that? And over the 50 years that SPM's been around that I'm sure you've gone through some kind of evolution in the maintenance protocols to try and extend the fluid end life. Is that fair to say?

00:26:13 Connor Docherty
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And when I think about that evolution of maintenance, even just within the time I've been involved in this industry and with SPM, it's really changed and it's kind of almost a conflicting change. Sometimes we want to make sure that our equipment, as we talked about more with less, more uptime, higher stakes with higher horsepower, bigger jobs. The equipment, there's a bigger focus on reliability and uptime. But to ensure that reliability and uptime, maintenance has to be on point. But while these jobs are getting bigger, you've got all the kind of introduction of these multi-well jobs, Simul-frac, where you're fracking multiple wells at the one time where you're fracking back to back. The opportunity for maintenance has become so much smaller. So we've got so much more of an emphasis and an importance on proper maintenance to ensure reliability, and we've got less, less time to do it. So that's really an interesting evolution within our industry, but also puts a big onus on SPM to make sure that we're catering to our customers that need to live within that world. So we've kind of done a lot of things on SPM side and then SPM as SPM and then SPN as part of Caterpillar. Within SPM, as I said, we look to provide the products that support maintenance and reliability. We look to provide the tools that support fast and easy maintenance. And we've also got a dedicated team here based in Fort Worth that travel the country over visiting with customers that we'll do training, whether that's on site, at their yard, bringing them here, that will train them on the best way to do maintenance, the safe way to do the maintenance, the tools to do maintenance. And then now that we're part of Caterpillar, we're all within the Caterpillar oil and gas services industry as well, which is a whole organization dedicated to say, look, if you want us to take some responsibility for the work that needs to get done on site, the maintenance that needs to get done on site, look, we can put together a commercial agreement with you that will say, look, we'll handle this part of the job or this piece of equipment to make sure that we're taking one less thing off your plate. Now, the beauty of that is between SPM and Cat oil and gas services is we've got the expertise and the people to be very flexible to do what a customer needs. But we've identified the problems and the challenges and we've got a whole range, be it product or service, to support what a customer wants to do when it comes to making sure that their maintenance and their services and their practices are all up to speed and as needed to ensure that they can do back to that more or less and more uptime with bigger job requirements.

00:29:07 KC Yost
I gotcha. I got you. I got you. It sounds like the Caterpillar relationship is working out well for SPM.

00:29:16 Connor Docherty
Oh, definitely. Yeah. We've been probably three years now, three and a bit years maybe, as part of Caterpillar. So yeah, we're definitely well integrated and working together to make sure that product and services and organizations are all aligned to make sure that, as I said, we're providing products and then commercial opportunities and services that is pretty unique within the frack industry.

00:29:45 KC Yost
Good. Good, good. Well, nice plug for my sponsor. Thank you very much.

00:29:50 Connor Docherty
No worries.

00:29:51 KC Yost
This podcast would not exist without them so nice plug, way to fit that into the conversation. You did well.

00:29:57 Connor Docherty
Of course. I've got your back, KC. I've got your back.

00:30:00 KC Yost
I'm quite impressed. Very good, very good. So we're starting to run out of time, but let's look to the future. What do you see as the next big challenges or opportunities? I was taught a long time ago that there aren't challenges, there are just opportunities, right? It's how you look at the speed bumps that are ahead of you, just an opportunity for this continuous duty operations and doing more with less and all of that. How do you see the future developing over the next few years?

00:30:36 Connor Docherty
Yeah. So I think when I look at it, I'll take the opinion of opportunity as well, KC. And there's three areas where I see some, well I think short to medium term, we'll see some big changes in developments with our industry that I think will have a huge, huge impact. The first one we've talked about already, which I think is looking to have higher horsepower applications. I mean, if you've got higher horsepower on one trailer, you can have less trailer and the economics of that start to become extremely significant. We talked about people operating anywhere up to 5,000 horsepower. There's already conversations and things being looked at going beyond 5,000 horsepower when you talk about 6 or 7,000 horsepower, which is crazy. And that presents a significant opportunity for anyone like SPM who makes power ends and pumps, and Caterpillar as well with our engines and transmissions, to go and continually building out our influence within the industry, leading a new frontier of horsepower and power density. And also, one of the things that we talk about a lot, and I think is sit in very primed at the moment, is if you look at a lot of the equipment and fluid ends, we've talked a lot about today is one of them. If you look at the design of a fluid end today compared to 20 years ago, the general architecture is very, very similar. Now, I think as we've developed materials and understandings and technologies, I think there's a big opportunity here that we can innovate and we can design and we can bring new products that start to break the conventional mold which will give step changes in life, step changes in serviceability. And then I think the last one as well, which is kind of a wee bit offset from just the product and the application side of the industry, which is how our customers and even ourselves use and leverage product data. I mean, I think in the past, the data is very fundamental to say, I've got a problem. I need to shut something off and I need to go investigate. People are collecting a huge amount of operational and site data on a day-to-day basis. And I think we'll start to see a bit of an advent of people looking to leverage that lake of data to start saying, just beyond a warning light, how can I start optimizing my operations, my equipment, and my site to start hitting some of those more or less and more uptime and less downtime challenges and metrics as we talked about. At the end of the day, it's all about better economics and financials, and that could be a powerful tool to start driving some of the other aspects of operation and product to do that.

00:33:31 KC Yost
Sounds like a promising future with a lot of grand opportunities out there.

00:33:37 Connor Docherty
Definitely. I believe so.

00:33:38 KC Yost
Good. Good. Well, we're close to time, but I did want to ask is there anything else you want to add? Anything that I might not have asked you about that you want to throw in here?

00:33:51 Connor Docherty
Yeah. No, I think-

00:33:53 KC Yost
If not, there's no problem.

00:33:55 Connor Docherty
Yeah, no, no, no. I think we've covered a lot. And I think fluid ends, they deal with all the worst of the worst on site. They deal with the pressure, they deal with the sand, they deal with the slurry, they kind of deal with all the vibrations. And while that comes with a lot of its challenges, it kind of comes with a lot of the opportunities as well. So yeah, I think at SPM, we've constantly designed and developed our product to match the requirements of today. We're continually designing and developing to make sure that we're providing the best solutions to our customers, that hit that TCO and make their financial performance better and the operation performance better. And we're continuing to design and develop with some of those new frontiers that I talked about to bring some more exciting products into the future. And I think the fluid end space is an exciting one because of all the challenges you get to deal with, or opportunities as we suggested. And I think there's some big opportunities and some cool things that we'll start to see there in the next few years.

00:35:03 KC Yost
Okay. So one question just came to mind and I got to ask it. I'm really going to put you on the spot.

00:35:10 Connor Docherty
Sure.

00:35:10 KC Yost
If a fluid end is properly maintained, what is the typical life of a fluid end? If it's properly maintained.

00:35:22 Connor Docherty
Properly maintained, average sort of operating conditions, I'd say a fluid end can consistently hit about 2,000, 2, 500 hours.

00:35:32 KC Yost
Oh, that's good.

00:35:33 Connor Docherty
There's a lot of variability to that, of course.

00:35:36 KC Yost
Of course.

00:35:37 Connor Docherty
With different operating conditions and things like that, but properly maintained with a standard operating condition in the industry, you can hit 2000 plus hours.

00:35:47 KC Yost
And then do you take it back and re-drill it and put it back into service like you would an engine that has 150,000 miles on the car, or do you have to melt it down and start over again?

00:36:01 Connor Docherty
Yeah, melt it down and start over.

00:36:03 KC Yost
Okay.

00:36:04 Connor Docherty
The amount of pressure and cycles and cyclical fatigue that you see within the fluid end, you can never quite quantify that with tests. So yeah, I mean, you can run it and you can definitely... We can do things like we can re-sleeve ceiling surfaces and things like that, which we can go and bring some additional life out of it. But I guess the point from the fatigue of a material that you're melting it down inaudible again.

00:36:31 KC Yost
2,000 hours. Sounds like a great number. Sounds like a great number. Okay. Connor, thanks very much for taking the time to visit with us today. This has been a great conversation. I've appreciated it.

00:36:42 Connor Docherty
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

00:36:45 KC Yost
Yeah. So if anyone would like to learn more about SPM and the products and services they provide, and they do provide a lot of products and services beyond fluid ends, which we were talking about today. You can find them on the web at spmoilandgas.com. Now that's all spelled out, spmoilandgas.com. That's all spelled out, okay. So good. Thanks all for tuning into this episode of The Energy Pipeline Podcast sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas that Connor so graciously mentioned earlier. So thank you very much, sir. If you guys have any questions or comments or ideas for podcast topics, feel free to email me at kc.yost@oggn.com. I also want to thank my producer, Anastasia Willison-Duff, and everyone at the Oil and Gas Global Network for making this podcast possible. Find out more about other OGGN podcasts at oggn.com. This is KC Yost saying goodbye for now. Have a great week. Keep that energy flowing through the pipeline.

00:37:51 Speaker 5
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