Innovations spark services company
After more than two decades in the oil-field services business, Hinton-based Murray Services Inc. has been transformed by a pair of innovations company leaders hope also will change the industry.
Murray has a long history as a services firm, building platforms and containment barriers for oil wells and storage tanks. It’s newest ventures promise to expand the company into the products side of the business.
The effort began about three years ago when Joe Kokojan started tinkering with a new way to protect storage tanks.
“I came up with this idea starting with Popsicle sticks on my kitchen table at home,” said Kokojan, who is now Murray’s director of new ventures. “That first year was all engineering and design work. It was a tedious process — slow and expensive. I didn’t know if it was ever going to happen, but my boss kept saying, ‘Be patient. Let’s do it right.’”
Murray’s TuffBase is a plastic platform that can be assembled and placed beneath an oil storage tank. The platform separates the metal tank from the ground in a move designed to limit corrosion and extend the life of the tank.
“Now you won’t have to shut in the well to replace the tank,” Kokojan said. “With this, you put the tank on it, and
you don’t have to worry about it for 20 years, where it used to be that in five to seven years you’re having to replace it.”
Murray makes the platforms in three sizes: diameters of 12 feet, 15.5 feet and 21.5 feet.
The company’s other new product is the Apex Quick-Set Containment, a metal rectangle that is assembled around a planned storage tank site, allowing a liner to be quickly installed.
“We’ve spent our careers taking big tractors out to a site, digging trenches and auguring holes,” Kokojan said. “It’s a real laborintensive way of building a containment wall.
“They’re beautiful, and they’ve been great. But with the new system, we can build the same size containment in two or three hours with half the men.”
Containment systems are required by state and federal law and are designed to prevent tank leaks from spilling on the ground and spreading outside the containment area.
The Apex system is similar to an aboveground swimming pool, encapsulating the storage tanks.
“There’s nothing below grade, so there are not as many corrosion issues,” Kokojan said.
The Murray family traces its ties to the oil and natural gas industry to 1928 when Claude Murray became the 15th employee to work for Halliburton.
Murray’s son, Bill Murray, began Murray Services in 1998.
His son Steve joined the company in 2004 and now runs the business.
Kokojan was working as a sales director for the company three years ago when he approached Steve Murray with his idea for the TuffBase platform.
“Because our core business has been very successful, it afforded us time and funding to be creative,” Murray said.