Westrend Natural Gas Inc -
Joint venture with Hartfield Technical Services
Westrend Natural Gas Inc
WRN
Shares issued 18885569
1998-06-01 close $0.33
Monday Jun 1 1998
Mr. Mark Roberts reports
Westrend has entered into a joint venture arrangement with
Hartfield Technical Services and its principal, David
Hartfield of Lafayette, LA. The joint venture agreements call
for the creation of a new U.S. company to be named Alamo
Wireline, Inc. and provide that Westrend contributes the
equipment and personnel of Alamo Logging Service and HTS
contributes $800,000 (Canadian) cash. The cash, which has
already been contributed by HTS, was primarily applied to
pay out all of the short and long term debts of Alamo Logging
with the result that the new joint venture will be operating
debt-free.
Further, David Hartfield will be managing the joint venture
and relying on his 21 years of experience as a logging
engineer for Schlumberge and as the owner and manager of
HTS. HTS has nine logging trucks and eight offshore skid units
and is a successful logging company in Lafayette. HTS also
performs offshore work primarily in the Gulf of Mexico for
major oil and gas operators.
Management believes that there will be significant synergies
created out of this joint venture arising from the broad
experience of HTS, the HTS onshore and offshore contracts
between Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, combined with the
state-of-the-art equipment and technical ability of Alamo
Logging. In particular, Alamo Logging will be participating in
delivering a broader range of services, with access to offshore
logging services which had not been an available market
before.
Additionally, this joint venture enables Westrend to reduce its
administrative overhead by approximately $20,000 per month
as HTS has assumed payment of the administrative overhead
in connection with Alamo Logging.
The joint venture will be employing a full-time sales agent in
Houston, Texas to develop and increase the service work
demanded in connection with the existing offshore contracts
that HTS has in place. Even though the recent decline in crude
oil prices has slowed the onshore domestic drilling
contractors, to some extent, the offshore drilling contractors
are still working at 100 per cent capacity, which is one of the
main driving forces for this joint venture.
The new joint venture is debt-free, has sufficient working
capital to go forward, has both offshore and domestic
contracts, a diverse technical labour force and an experienced
management team. For these reasons, management believes
this joint venture should be a positive step for Westrend's
logging division.
As previously reported, Taylor Rig has received a purchase
order and is awaiting receipt of the initial deposit towards the
manufacture of two rigs for an Indonesian concern.
Management of Taylor Rig has also confirmed that an order in
principle has been received for a service rig in Alaska.
Management is waiting on receipt of the final purchase order
for a newly designed, fully winterized complete service rig
package, which is being placed by a major oil company. The
purchase price for this rig is approximately $3,000,000. The
management of Taylor Rig has been told that if this rig meets
requirements, there could be an additional three rigs ordered
of similar dollar value.
There have been initial discussions of a joint venture between
Taylor Rig and Skytop Brewster of Victoria, Texas and further
details will be released as they are finalized.
(c) Copyright 1998 Canjex Publishing Ltd.
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