GE Oil & Gas Showcases Growth in Technology and Global Capabilities

GE Oil & Gas today unveiled several new initiatives during a gathering here of oil and gas industry analysts that underscore the company’s transition over the past 20 years into a global provider of advanced engineering, software and financing solutions to help oil and gas companies make smart infrastructure management decisions and drive industrial growth and innovation.

GE entered the oil services sector with its 1994 acquisition of Italy’s Nuovo Pignone, a gas turbine, compression and pump equipment supplier that served primarily petrochemical processing plants and pipelines. Since then, GE Oil & Gas has grown into a $20 billion order business through acquisitions as well as investments in technology, with a focus on key segments including turbomachinery, subsea equipment and the booming unconventional oil and gas sector.

“Through a number of successful acquisitions and technology advancements, GE Oil & Gas today offers customers an unparalleled portfolio of advanced technology across all oil and gas segments,” said GE Oil & Gas President and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli. “Our portfolio now goes beyond equipment. Through our advanced technology, including hardware and software solutions and services, we help our customers manage their operations in a cost-efficient manner driving capital efficiency.”

Significant growth in the global unconventional oil and gas space is just one of the major energy trends driving the demand for GE Oil & Gas’ expertise and capabilities to address technical and environmental challenges facing the global energy industry. Unconventional oil and gas production is expected to increase globally by 9 percent per year by 2018 alone.

Following Nuovo Pignone, GE made several other oil and gas service business acquisitions in the past decade including VetcoGray, Hydril Pressure Control, Wellstream Holdings PLC, the Well Support Division of John Wood Group PLC and Lufkin Industries to become a more strategically integrated drilling, surface and subsea systems company.

These acquisitions have enhanced GE’s position to compete for future growth. In addition to the unconventional oil and gas production growth, the company expects subsea industry to increase globally 9 percent per year and liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry 8 percent per year by 2017.

Key initiatives highlighted at the meeting today include:

• A joint venture of GE and Ferus Natural Gas Fuels (Ferus NGF), along with Statoil, a leader in the oil and gas exploration and production industry, today announced the expansion of a pilot project to capture flare gas and use it to power Statoil’s drill rigs and to fuel its hydraulic fracturing operations in North Dakota. The expansion is the first step by Statoil to move into full commercial adoption of the GE and Ferus joint venture’s Last Mile™ Fueling Solution (Last Mile), which provides environmental, cost-saving and logistics solutions for the company’s Bakken oilfield operations. The Last Mile solution is enabling Statoil to comply with new flaring regulations in North Dakota, at a time when approximately 30 percent of natural gas produced in the Bakken is flared as waste.
• GE announced it is providing both technology and capital to help expedite construction of the Freeport LNG gas liquefaction and LNG export project in Southeast Texas. The Freeport facility will play a vital role in maximizing the value of abundant and affordable shale gas and will be the first world-scale electric LNG plant in North America. GE is supplying the main refrigeration compressors, variable-speed drive electric motors and other electrical equipment for two customized LNG liquefaction trains, each of which will produce a base volume of 4.4 mtpa of LNG. In addition, GE is providing financing to support the project through pre-construction engineering and design. Using GE’s electric motor-driven technology has enabled Freeport LNG to comply with strict local emissions standards and support its ambitious LNG production and export targets.
• GE and Accenture introduced their Intelligent Pipeline Solution (IPS), the first-ever Industrial Internet offering to help pipeline operators make better decisions concerning the condition of their critical machines and assets in the oil and gas pipeline industry. IPS combines Pipeline Management, a GE Predictivity software solution powered by the PredixTM platform, with Accenture’s digital technology and systems integration capabilities to help customers make better, faster decisions on their pipeline operations to improve safety and avoid costly downtime. Columbia Pipeline Group, strategically located within the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, will be the first customer to implement this breakthrough technology across its network of 15,000 miles of interstate natural gas pipelines.

“These agreements and technology advancements illustrate the breadth of GE Oil & Gas’ capabilities to meet the needs of our global customer base,” said Simonelli. “GE’s capabilities are broad and growing, and we are committed to making long-term investments in our products and teams to help serve customers around the world.”