Interview: Guillermo Capacho, Key Energy Services

The workload and technologies used in the frozen landscape of Russia’s Sakhalin Island call for different procedures than those in the sun-scorched deserts of Qatar or offshore the Gulf of Mexico. So how do operators and service companies keep their employees safe under such diverse working conditions?

According to Guillermo Capacho, SVP of International Business Development and Technology for Key Energy Services, the keys to safety are technology, training investment, standards and making safety a personal value.

“Our top priority is safety and to return every single employee back home in perfect shape,” says Capacho.

“Safety has always been important, but its focus is more reinforced in recent times. For us, as an American corporation, and for any company who wants to talk about differentiation, service quality and performance, you do that with people. Without taking good care of your people, without providing a very strong and very safe work environment, you are not going to be successful.”

Capacho, a Colombian petroleum engineer, speaks with more than 26 years of experience. He began work with directional-drilling technologies in the field before being promoted to vice president of Mexico Operations for Halliburton. Later, he moved to Key Energy as a VP of Latin America.

He served as senior vice president of Operations in the Middle East and Russia before his current position as leader of the research, development, deployment and integration of Key’s technology to the field. In early 2013, he agreed to take on the additional duties of business development, marketing, sales and continuous improvement programs for the corporation.

With around 10,000 employees, Key Energy has the world’s largest onshore rig fleet and is a global leader of production enhancement, well service and well intervention.

The company provides rig services, pipe handling, fluid management, coiled tubing service, fishing services and high-pressure rental equipment, among others. Key has an established presence in Mexico, Colombia, Bahrain, Oman and Russia, and operates in the US and Canada.

“On top of that, we are building a very strong consulting team focused on formation analyses, production and enhancement,” says Capacho. “To me, that is one of the biggest services that differentiates us from our peers. We have been receiving a lot of recognition from national oil companies and big service companies. They see us as a potential strategic partner because of what we do and the way we do it.”

In past decades, the oilfield industry was more flexible and relaxed about safety rules, says Capacho. But “hard lessons were learned” from lax safety procedures, he says. Even today, after highly publicized incidents within the industry, some corporations still fail in their efforts to maintain safe working conditions for their employees and the environment.

“These many incidents and fatalities are teaching the industry that safety is about the human factor. That is absolutely number one,” he says.

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“As a leader of international operations, you deal with multiple drilling environments in multiple countries. You have to show respect for the human factor and honor your core values.” Because Key Energy sees safety as a core business value, it has earned the status as the preferred employer in many of the regions in which it operates.

The patented rig data-capture KeyView system is a satellite-enabled system that allows operators to feed data from each job into a central data bank thereby enabling performance comparisons between similar jobs to establish typical performance benchmarks. The KeyView® system is used to supply rig crews with information to improve safety and efficiency and to identify opportunities for reducing non-productive time.

The program can archive data by rig, field, job, well and customer for any selected time period subsequently lowering overall intervention costs by improving wellsite safety, quality and efficiency.

Currently, more than 220 KeyView-enabled rigs are employed, and the proof of the technology’s success is in the data. KeyView-enabled rigs report up to a 56 percent reduction in safety incidents with job quality improved by up to 63 percent. Also, rigs equipped with theKeyView® system further enhance wellsite operational efficiency by reducing non-productive time up to 50%.

The KeyView is just one of the process-improvement programs Key Energy Services employs. “We continue to invest and build strong support for R&D. In fact, we have more than 100 people working on software development, automation, automation controls, real-time monitoring and all the other pieces of the puzzles in our technology portfolio. We do that in house.”

Historically, most breakthrough oilfield technology innovations are developed by service and supply companies. “I had the privilege and the honor to lead the first real-time operation in the world for Halliburton,” says Capacho.

“That project was a partnership of Statoil and Total in Paris and Caracas, Colombia. Since then, I fell in love with real-time operations, to be able to bring the field to the office and not the office to the field. It’s a fast-track learning-curve tool.”

Also, real-time data capture systems supports remote-location training classes. “We do have very good training programs in-house. For our international locations, we use a larger combination of in-house and external support because those customers are much more demanding.

Even when we are supporting our US-based customer at their international locations, we know they have to abide by both US regulations and their host-country regulations. So we also have specific training to cover all those local aspects.”

In addition to using cutting-edge technology, Capacho advises sufficient corporate investment in training programs.

As a result of its appropriate investment, the company’s training standards are very high in every country.

“Protecting our people is a high priority. In order to do that, you have to invest. We are not shy of investing in training. All of our international locations are, or will soon be, ISO-certified. In many of those locations, we are OSHA certified. We also contribute very strong corporate HS&E resources, procedures and management systems. We are deploying those everywhere we go.”

Key’s third-party contractors must also comply with the company’s specific training standards. “We are responsible for any third-party supporting the international operations that we have. If they fail, it’s not them; it’s Key Energy Services.

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We ensure they comply with each certification by performing audits of those companies. Our contract terms and conditions apply to everyone working in those countries. If they don’t have training embedded in their corporations, then we request third-party support for them. In many cases, they are in the same classes with our guys.”

Yet, it’s one thing to talk about implementing safety programs and quite another to prove their worth, he says.

“As proof, I just received the latest safety records of last year’s international operations, and it shows one of the strongest performances that I have seen in my 26-year career. We had a 0.4 total incident rate. With the amount of working manhours that we undertake, that’s huge.” Such safe practices can give a corporation a competitive edge, he says.

“You can’t just give a 200-page binder to someone and ask them to go read that and come back,” he says.

“We use multi-media and we have been using those tools even more during the past two or three years. We have put together videos with other training material that allow us to utilize CDs, pin drives and other forms of electronic information. With today’s communications, we have many alternatives to supply the message, and we are taking advantage of that.”

Specifically, a recent video capturing an assembly of the HEAT Liner Hanger System setting tool and its ancillary components was filmed – this video is now available as a visual tool to enhance efficiency and safety.

Also, many of the training modules are tailored to specific skill levels as part of a competency program. “It’s a natural development of what we are doing. To work in a specific area, the worker needs certain training to abide by compliance rules. We have a very strong portfolio of that. We are working on the next step, which is to start framing skill-directed training.”

Key has detailed training specifically for harsh environments. “We have workers in extreme temperatures, such as in the deserts of the Middle East and in Russia. We built training classes about how to keep our crews in shape with specific procedures to follow.

For example, we provide education about dehydration. In Russia, sometimes we have to shut down operations because of the cold.” In that event, the company authorizes its employees to stop work at any point on any project if a worker recognizes an unsafe condition. Any level employee is authorized to call a halt to the work, he says.

Another key to safety is ensuring a strong local contingency of workers wherever it goes, says Capacho.

“Our franchise strategy employs standard equipment with standard processes and procedures. We have an international pool of field supervisors that go onsite and set the safety bar, train locals and then allow them to take over.

Virtually 100 percent of the crews are local or regional, so they already have good knowledge of their environments. We teach them how to operate safely. We start the education and the training process, and then they take over the program progressively. We find that helps deliver quality services as well as safety to our customers.”

To recruit local talent, Key works with various colleges and universities to provide executive and field operations classes in several countries. “Internationally, we hire people coming out of school with engineering degrees. We aggressively go after that talent to build our management for the future.

To ensure its employees buy into the safety-focused culture of the company, Key starts to train each employee from day one, he says.

“We start implanting the safety culture into every new employee’s DNA right from the beginning. Even as we coordinate with unions, local communities and different international cultures that have, by tradition, been working in the field without safety priorities, once we put those people in the classes, they understand that safety is not just about the program; it’s about them and their families.”

Key developed a training campaign named “Make It Personal.” The campaign promotes images depicting the importance of every worker returning home safely to his or her family in the same condition in which he or she left for work. One particularly effective poster portrays an image of a baby’s hand resting in a roughneck’s large, masculine hand.

“We want them to know it’s not about the company, or its safety record, or corporate America; it’s about them going home with their fingers in place. When you touch people’s hearts, you engage them, and it’s personal. It’s not about setting rules and policies. We make sure our people are engaged in safety and to understand that it’s not for us; it’s for them. We’ve seen that show a huge improvement in the culture of safety.”

When asked how the employees react when Key makes safety so personal, Capacho says, “It’s amazing. And it’s about human nature. When someone from our company talks about how important a worker is to his family, you can see the reaction, because that is not a normal speech in our industry. To me, that’s what really drives the difference.”