1. The first thing that stands out when you see
Par Five Energy Services’ yard from the road
is that there is a lot of the color orange. The
same can be seen throughout the shops,
even the company shirts are orange. The
town’s high school colors just happen to be
orange, white and black. I guess Texas isn’t
the only place they take their football very
serious.
Par Five Energy Services was established by
Curtis Tolle in January 2011. It is a state of
the art bulk plant facility and cement lab
that provides oilfield cementing and
remedial work in southeast New Mexico and
west Texas. Oil well cementing is a process
of mixing a slurry of cement and water and
pumping it through the casing pipe into the
annulus between the casing pipe and the
drilled hole. Cement plugs are also set in the
wellbore to isolate zones such as water
bearing zones. That sounds easy enough.
Grab a bag of cement, add water, mix with a
shovel or hole and pour down the hole,
right? Well as we found out, this too is a fine
science and no one cement job is the same
as the next.
Our first stop, the cement lab or as I call it
the “test kitchen” . Here the lab technicians
receive the specifications of the well to be
cemented and start testing samples for vis-
cosity. Each job requires a different “recipe”
to be mixed and the lab is where they
work on small batches to get it just right.
There was an array of canisters and contain-
ers with what looked like some serious
secret ingredients. Imagine the surprise
when we found out that one container of
powder was actually ground up beetles, an-
other was what use to be glass beads used in
jewelry and a few other ingredients were
similar to ingredients used in facials. Taking
us through the process they begin by mixing
the dry ingredients and slowly adding water
until the mixture is workable; adding bind-
ing agents, thickener and foam reducer as
needed. Once they think the recipe is right
what they need; it is placed into an ‘oven’ to
speed up the hardening and prepare it for
the compressive strength assessment to
determine the effects of pressure and
Story by: Katherine Stokes
temperature changes that will take place
inside the borehole once the cement is
pumped down the hole. The assessment can
last anywhere from 48 to 72 hours using a
cured cement sample. The technicians at Par
Five will simultaneously change the pres-
sures and temperatures all the wile taking
measurements and recording data.
It’s important that they get this sample
batch right before going into bulk
production. Among all the operations being
performed in drilling a well this would rank
at the top of the list of importance. The
durability of the borehole and efficiency of
the well production depends on a successful
and complete cement job. The cementing
process serves two purposes: 1) to restrict
fluid movement between formations and

2. 2) support the casing in the hole. It also
protects the casing from corrosion and
prevents blowouts by quickly forming a
seal.
As is my usual line of inquiry, I ask the lab
technician if he went to school for this job.
He actually went to school and received his
degree in computer software design; which
comes in handy on this job as he walks over
to the bank of computers and shows the logs,
measurements and tests being fed into a
software system that he updates regularly.
As far as his experience with cementing;
he learned all of that on-the-job while
working at Schlumberger. He stressed
understanding basic math computation,
reading and writing comprehension
of instructions and the ability to learn
and utilize technology as the industry
is becoming very efficient in using
technology in every aspect of the drilling
process.
Next stop, the bulk mixing plant. Once the
“recipe” has been developed in the lab; it is
sent over to the bulk mixing plant where the
ingredients are mixed in large quantities for
the job. The large silos to the right hold the
concrete, sand and aggregate. This is an
automated process where the
“recipe” is entered into the system
and by pushing a few buttons the
correct amount of concrete, sand
and aggregate is dispensed. Once
all the ingredients are dispensed
it is loaded into the mobile field
bins or bulk trucks depending on
the job. As we head out to take a
look at the equipment used in the
process; we notice pallets of 50 lb.
bags of sugar. Curtis tells us that if
they have a particularly deep well
they will be pumping cement into and they
don’t want the cement to set-up before
making it all the
way down the
center of the
casing and back
up the hole to
make a complete
seal; they add
sugar. There is
nothing special
about the sugar. It
is the same sugar
you and I buy at the store to add
to our iced tea, cake frostings or
morning grapefruit.
All the dry cement mix is loaded
into the bulk transport trucks.
Depending on the job and
location; some cement is pre-
mixed and trucked to location.
Other jobs require and dry bulk
transport and a double pump
cementer with ADC. The double pump
cementer is the work horse on the job.
The The bulk transport is backed up to
rear of the double pump. The double pump
holds the water, pumps, generator and
mechanics for mixing the dry with the wet
ingredients and then pumping it down the
hole. Again, technology and computers
play a big part in the automation of this
process.
The state-of-the-art facility, equipment and
opportunity to see the work being done in
striving for energy independence was such
a privilege and I would like to thank Par Five
for opening their doors to us.
Strive to be the
best! State-of-the-
art equipment,
experienced
professionals and
high quality
services.