Baker Oil Tools, Inc.

Product Details

Historical Context

Reuben C. Baker was a farm boy with a third grade education who followed his brother Aaron Alphonso Baker into the oil business. In 1895 he got a job in a California oilfield with 95 cents in his pocket. His first job was driving a horse team to haul oil for drillers. One year later he became a drilling contractor.

In July 1907, the 34-year-old inventor and entrepreneur was working in Coalinga, California when he was granted a U.S. patent for a casing shoe that enabled drillers to efficiently run casing and cement it in oil wells. The casing shoe revolutionized cable tool drilling by ensuring the uninterrupted flow of oil through the bottom of the casing in the well.

This innovation launched the business that would become Baker Oil Tools. In 1928, Baker Casing Shoe Company changed its name to Baker Oil Tools, Inc., to reflect its product line of completion, cementing and fishing equipment.

In early 1956, during one of the most successful periods in the company's history, Baker retired as President of Baker Oil Tools and was succeeded by his long-time associate Ted Sutter. Baker died only a few weeks later after a brief illness at the age of 85. Although he only had three years of formal education, Baker received more than 150 patents in his lifetime. In 1965, Sutter was succeeded by E.H. "Hubie" Clark, who became the first Baker Hughes chairman of the board in 1987. During its 80-year history prior to its merger with Baker Hughes, Baker Oil Tools had only three chief executives.

INTEQ also originally incorporated the drilling fluids division of Baker Hughes which consisted of Milpark and others. This division was called 'INTEQ drilling fluids' which provided the premier brands in oil and gas well drilling muds and wellbore cleaning fluids. In 2003, these product lines were spun off to form the separate entity of Baker Hughes Drilling Fluids (BHDF), with INTEQ continuing as the Drilling and Evaluation (D&E) company. INTEQ provides directional Drilling, MWD/LWD, surface logging (Mudlogging) and coring services.

The company's flagship brand has been the AutoTrak rotary steerable drilling system which was a pioneering directional drilling tool and has been responsible for the company's relatively strong market share in the past few years. Introduced in 1997 with Agip S.p.A., the tool is fundamentally different compared to contemporary rivals such as the PowerDrive and the GeoPilot employing the hybrid technique of "pushing and pointing (vectoring) the bit" rather than only "pointing the bit" or only "pushing the bit".

Baker expanded to Houston in the 1920s, and although buffeted by the Great Depression, survived and continued growing into the 1960s. In 1976 it became Baker International Corporation with almost all of its operations headquartered in Houston. As a result of the oil bust of the 1980s, in 1987, Baker International acquired and merged with Hughes Tool Company to form Baker Hughes Incorporated. In 1992, Baker Hughes acquired Christensen Diamond Products and merged it with Hughes Tool Company to form the drilling and evaluation division, Hughes Christensen.

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