Patterson-UTI Brand Guidelines: A 1978 Snyder Rig Firm, UTI in 2001 & NexTier in 2023

Nine rigs in Snyder, Texas.

Patterson-UTI has two family trees. The first began in 1978 in Snyder, Texas, when Cloyce A. Talbott and A. Glenn Patterson founded Patterson Drilling Company, according to the International Directory of Company Histories. Talbott, a petroleum engineering graduate of Texas Tech, had already run a well-servicing business; the new company started as a small land driller with nine rigs. It took the name Patterson Energy in 1984 while still trading as Patterson Drilling, and it went public in 1993.

The 1990s were a decade of buying. The land-drilling business was fragmented, and Patterson grew by acquisition: Questor Drilling in 1994, Tucker Drilling in 1996, Wes-Tex Drilling in 1997, and Lone Star Mud, Robertson Onshore Drilling and Tejas Drilling Fluids in 1998, the Directory says. In the four years after its listing its fleet grew from 13 rigs to 46, and early in 2001 it bought Jones Drilling of Duncan, Oklahoma.

The second tree is UTI Energy. The Directory and English Wikipedia say UTI was formed in 1986 to buy four oilfield businesses and named itself from their initials: Universal Well Services, Union Supply Company, Triad Drilling Company and International Petroleum Services Company. Patterson-UTI’s own website instead dates UTI’s start to a 1987 spin-off of drilling and oilfield services from a gas production company in the northeastern United States. The oldest of the four, Union Supply, dated from 1939, and Triad had drilled since 1947, according to the Directory. Based in Houston, UTI also listed in 1993.

A merger of equals, then a long run of deals.

The two companies agreed to combine in February 2001, in what the Directory describes as a merger of equals three years in the making, with Patterson as the surviving company and the new name Patterson-UTI Energy. UTI’s chairman, Mark Siegel, became chairman and Talbott chief executive. The Directory quotes an industry analyst who said the deal made the combined company “a strong No. 2” among US land drillers, after Nabors. By the end of 2002 its fleet numbered 324 rigs, most of them mechanical, with 38 SCR electric rigs.

The buying continued. English Wikipedia lists Warrior Rig in September 2016; Seventy Seven Energy in April 2017, which brought Great Plains Oilfield Rental, Nomac Drilling and Performance Technologies; MS Energy Services in October 2017, now MS Directional; the wellbore-placement software firm Superior QC in February 2018; Current Power Solutions in October 2018; and Pioneer Energy Services, completed in October 2021.

The next change came in 2023. On 1 September 2023 Patterson-UTI completed its all-stock merger with NexTier Oilfield Solutions, the company announced from Houston that day. The combined business kept the Patterson-UTI Energy name, the Nasdaq ticker PTEN and its Houston headquarters; at closing it reported 172 super-spec drilling rigs in its US contract drilling business, while its well completions business would trade under the NexTier Completions brand. Andy Hendricks stayed as president and chief executive, and the board was drawn from both companies.

Today the website groups the business into drilling services, drilling products, completion services, power services and performance optimization. Its land rigs are sold under the APEX name, its drill bits under Ulterra, and its rig data system under CORTEX; NexTier carries the hydraulic fracturing and wireline work.

How drilling contractors present themselves.

Drilling contractors sell time on machines that most of their customers’ shareholders will never see, so their public image leans heavily on photographs of the machines themselves. Offshore companies favour the long view: a drillship or a semi-submersible standing alone on open water, its derrick the tallest thing for miles, or a jackup rig on its three legs with the sun going down behind it. Land drillers tend to show a single rig on flat, open ground, with a line of trucks and a wide sky.

People appear too, and usually in working clothes. Derrick crews in coveralls and hard hats, gloved hands on pipe, and teams on the rig floor are the standard human images of the trade. Many contractors also run named safety campaigns aimed at their own crews, with slogans, posters and stickers that become part of the visual language of a rig as much as of the company.

Much of a driller’s graphic output is financial and technical rather than promotional. Listed contractors publish fleet status reports, which list each rig with its type, location, customer and contract dates, and investor presentations full of rig diagrams, maps and backlog charts. These documents are read closely by analysts and customers, and their layout is often plainer and more consistent than the company’s marketing.

Names carry a lot of the weight. The industry has been shaped by mergers, so many contractors are the sum of older firms, and rigs often keep a predecessor’s name or a numbered series long after the company that built them has gone. A contractor’s identity can therefore be read in its rig names and its logo on a hull as much as in any brochure.

Two founders’ names, one hyphen.

The name records its history. Patterson-UTI keeps the surname of one founder and the initials of four older businesses, joined by a hyphen, and it has kept that name through every deal since 2001, including the NexTier merger. Several acquired businesses live on as named companies within the group, English Wikipedia and the website show: NexTier for completions, Great Plains Oilfield Rental for rental equipment, and MS Directional, formerly MS Energy Services, for directional drilling.

The company describes itself as a provider of drilling and completion services in the United States and other selected countries, with drill bits also sold in the Middle East and elsewhere. Its website gives its roots as the 1978 drilling operations of Patterson Energy in West Texas, and credits its success to what it calls a “ready-to-serve culture.”

Its record includes a serious accident. On 22 January 2018 a blowout and fire at the Pryor Trust gas well in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, was investigated by the US Chemical Safety Board. The board’s final report was released in Oklahoma City on 12 June 2019, and its recommendations to Patterson-UTI covered tripping procedures, flow checks and safety measurement; the board’s website lists all 19 of the investigation’s recommendations as closed.

The history also shows how land drilling consolidated. In 2001 the Directory placed Patterson second among US land drillers behind Nabors, which the Directory says helped set off that wave of buying in the 1990s; Patterson-UTI has since grown by taking in Seventy Seven Energy, Pioneer and NexTier.

For a design guide, Patterson-UTI shows how a company can grow through mergers while keeping a hyphenated name that records two founding firms, and let acquired names live on as product brands. Compare Nabors, which the Directory credits with helping to start the 1990s consolidation, and Helmerich & Payne, another US land-rig contractor. For this guide we use a rust, a pale caliche and a near-black with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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