Buyer of Schlumberger's frack unit eyes top spot in the industry

Liberty Oilfield Services is buying Schlumberger’s OneStim fracking business in return for a 37% stake

Oil pumps in Texas, US. Liberty is growing its presence within the fracking business that is severely shrinking. Reuters

Liberty Oilfield Services, which will become North America’s second-biggest fracking provider with the acquisition of a Schlumberger unit, expects to one day topple Halliburton from the number one spot.

“Customer demand has told us to grow at this pace, and then deals like this come to us,” Liberty chief executive Chris Wright said in an interview after the deal was announced on Tuesday. “Our goal with this acquisition is to keep getting better, but to the extent we succeed at that, it probably leads to us being the leader sometime down the road.”

Less than three years ago, the Denver contractor didn’t even crack the top ten for its frack fleet size. Now in its ninth year of business, Liberty is growing its presence within a business that is severely shrinking: three quarters of US frack crews have been sidelined this year, according to research and consultancy firm Primary Vision.

Mr Wright said he’s not concerned that rivals like Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Weatherford International are exiting the fracking business.

“When you do a lot of business lines – and those are all good companies – it’s harder to be truly fantastic,”  Mr Wright, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained electrical engineer, said. “I liken what’s gone on with the shale revolution to the dot-com revolution.”

Liberty agreed to buy Schlumberger’s OneStim fracking business in exchange for a 37 per cent stake in the combined company. Beyond the growth of its traditional frack fleet, Mr Wright said a hidden gem in the deal is getting Schlumberger’s electric blender technology that mixes the water, sand and frack chemicals prior to being pumped into holes. He aims to pair the electric blenders with his company’s two-year effort to develop the next generation in frack pumps that work off electricity, rather than diesel.

But Mr Wright said building new electric pumps in a market already oversupplied with diesel-powered fracking gear won’t be easy. His company already has plans to scrap about 1 million horsepower of frack pumps it just bought from Schlumberger.

“We’ll only build new, next-generation fleets with partnerships with customers,” he said. “I’m pretty confident we will have that out next year.”