After setting up small office-warehouse complexes in Adelaide and Perth in recent years, the original equipment manufacturer and solids control technology company has now set its sights on the large United States service industry, as well as continuing to expand in the active Asian oil and gas scene.

“Most of the people in the industry here and in Australia know who we are, but that’s not the case in the US or Asia,” operations manager Toby Lecher told EnergyReview.Net.

“The recent establishment of a Tulsa office and Houston warehouse for associate company Pacific Wire Panels opens the way for DFE to become part of the biggest oil and gas market in the world.

“Preliminary work is currently underway for establishing a base in the USA and this could happen as early as next year.”

Lecher said DFE was already winning work in Asia and recent contracts included providing centrifuges to Cairn Energy for some of its Indian programs and similar contracts with Murphy Oil in Malaysia. Also equipment has been mobilised for work in Mauritania, Africa.

DFE, Pacific Wire Panels (PWP) and Amtec Engineering (which has offices-workshops in New Plymouth and Newcastle, Australia) form a group that offers comprehensive drilling fluid equipment packages.

DFE designs and markets a whole range of products that includes linear motion shale shakers, centrifuges, degassers, mud tank systems and liquid mud plants; while Amtec fabricates those products, and PWP is dedicated to manufacturing replacement screens for all makes of Shale Shakers.

“The overseas mergers of some of the large service companies opens up opportunities for firms such as ourselves to fill a niche the big boys sometimes overlook, that is, servicing smaller exploration companies that have extensive, continuous drilling programs.”

In recent years DFE and Amtec have done equipment design and fabrication of mud mixing systems for the offshore Maui and onshore Ngatoro fields, as well as mud system design and fabrication for New Zealand Antarctic projects.