Baker Hughes moves beyond oil and gas with new partnership

Baker Hughes has partnered with the world’s largest fastener company to manufacture parts for industries outside of oil and gas as the oil-field services company buttresses itself against the pandemic fallout.

The company, with headquarters in Houston and London, said Wednesday that its collaboration with Wurth Industry North America, a subsidiary of Germany-based Wurth Group, will expand its design, manufacturing and 3D printing services to customers in renewables, power generation, maritime, automotive and aerospace industries.

“By combining our advanced design and additive manufacturing capabilities with Wurth’s global customer base, we can expand the scope and scale of our services outside of oil and gas,” Scott Parent, Baker Hughes’ chief technology officer for digital solutions, said in a statement.

Oil-field services companies are looking to diversify their businesses as recent oil busts and the global shift to renewables shrinks the oil and gas industry. The sector has lost 92,000 jobs since the coronavirus pandemic slashed demand for crude in March according to the Petroleum Equipment & Services Association, a Houston trade group. The sector was the hardest hit during the downturn as drillers reduced operations in the oil patch.

Diversification has helped raise the share of revenue from operations outside oil-field services to 27 percent in 2018, up from 22 percent in 2014, according to a report released last year by Rystad, a Norwegian energy research firm. Oil and gas contractors Technip, Saipem and Fugro also have diversified its operations.

Baker Hughes has sought business outside of oil and gas for several years. In 2019, after three years as a General Electric company, the newly independent Baker Hughes rebranded itself as an energy technology company with plans to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in 2050.

Earlier this month, the company announced plans to acquire Compact Carbon Capture, a Norwegian tech company developing equipment that can remove greenhouse gases from oil and gas operations.

Baker Hughes’ partnership with Wurth Group will allow it to tap into the fastener company’s global customer base of more than 80,000 clients across many industries. The energy company will help take customers’ manufacturing ideas from prototype to mass production using Baker Hughes’ automation, design, 3D printing and manufacturing capabilities honed from decades of oil and gas experience, the company said.

One of the first customers to benefit from this collaboration will be NASA. The partnership will manufacture a part used in NASA’s wind tunnel tests.

Source: houstonchronicle.com

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