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Vacant local gas plant to see new life

BJ Services coming, will employ 200

By BOB ROLLEY

brolley@lockhaven.com

MILL HALL – The former local Baker Hughes regional natural gas services center will see new life in coming months.

Texas-based BJ Services said it will relocate its Clarksburg, W. Va., operations into the former Baker Hughes facility just off Route 220 in the Lamar Township Business Park south of Mill Hall.

The company said it anticipates moving more than 200 employees here.

That number reflects the firm’s entire natural gas fracturing operation in Clarksburg, BJ Spokesperson Michelle Pyner told PennLive.com.

The transfer will take place over the next three months.

That’s the opposite of what occurred in spring 2016, when Baker Hughes closed the plant and moved operations to Clarksburg.

The facility entails over 95,000 square feet under roof in six different buildings, with the main building combining an office area with a garage facility.

Baker Hughes opened the natural gas pressure pumping facility in late December 2012.

At one point after it opened, Baker Hughes employed 200 people.

However, as gas exploration and production slowed, Baker Hughes put the facility up for sale in September 2016 – four years after it invested upward of $37 million to build the center on 38 acres in the business park.

Clinton County Economic Partnership CEO Mike Flanagan said he’s elated BJ Services is moving an important part of its energy production business to Clinton County.

“This is wonderful news,” Flanagan told The Express.

“We believe it shows that the natural gas industry to coming back in this area.”

He said it’s possible BJ Services will hire locally, though BJ Services said Clarksburg employees are being given the choice to stay with the firm and come to Clinton County.

Fracturing fleets and crews will report out of Mill Hall that will serve as the district office for support operations in the Marcellus and Utica natural gas basins, the firm said.

Clinton County and much of Pennsylvania sit atop the Marcellus Shale formation, from which natural gas is produced through well-drilling using vertical and horizontal hydraulic fracturing technology.

Much of the state-owned forestland in northern and western Clinton County was leased by the state for gas drilling.

Some gas exploration activities are continuing north of Lock Haven.

BJ Services is based in Tomball, Texas, has plants across the United States and in Canada.

BJ Services bought the hydraulic fracturing side of Baker Hughes a couple of years ago. Baker Hughes still owns about 45 percent of the business.

But BJ Services is the majority owner, Flanagan explained.

This will be the only BJ Services facility in Pennsylvania.

The firm is considered to be among the largest oilfield-energy services provider in North America, focusing on land cementing and hydraulic fracturing services.

It is an independent company created when CSL Capital Management and West Street Energy Partners in December 2016 acquired it from Baker Hughes which retained a 46.4 percent ownership stake.

BJ Services traces its roots to 1872, when Byron Jackson, a leader of the American Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 20th Century, formed the Byron Jackson Co. in Woodland, Calif. It was there where he designed and built the first centrifugal deep-well turbine pump, allowing large volumes of water to be pumped from deep underground reservoirs.

The move to Clinton County will better support “our growing business in the Marcellus and Utica natural gas basins,” Pyner said.

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