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U.S. takes a crack at China’s tough shale
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/U-S-fracturing-takes-a-crack-at-China-s-tough-5691345.php?cmpid=email-premium&t=b6e0d41b0981750c0d#/0

While hydraulic fracturing has engendered environmental opposition and even some local bans in the United States, the Chinese government is eager to reduce the country’s thick air pollution. It hopes the nation’s shale might provide enough cleaner-burning natural gas to replace coal in power plants.

Through a series of new joint ventures, Halliburton, FTS International and others with major operations in Texas are exporting the technological breakthroughs in U.S. hydraulic fracturing, including pressure pumps that use less water and multiwell drilling from platforms called pads that can cut down on an operator’s footprint.

The advances, the companies say, could speed up China’s sluggish quest to redo the U.S. energy gusher, tapping resources in Chinese locations ranging from a remote desert to a city larger than Houston.

Making inroads in China’s rising shale gas industry also could prop up the Texas oil field services firms in the Eastern Hemisphere’s sturdy drilling market, where they’re already servicing the state-owned oil giants in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states.

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Halliburton said it expects fourth-quarter profits to reach 20 percent growth in the Eastern Hemisphere. The expansion of its business in China isn’t likely to move the needle much for its $5 billion overall business in the Middle East and Asia, but it’s a bigger foothold in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

The China work might be more significant for Fort Worth-based FTS International, a private well completion company that has formed only a handful of international joint ventures, including one in June with China’s Sinopec.

Excerpted for Houston Chronicle