DEPARTMENTS • PERSPECTIVES
Martyn Parker,
Pruitt: Technical
safety, working
to industry’s
recommended practices are both
non-negotiable BY LINDA HSIEH, EDITOR & PUBLISHER
While the oil and gas industry is often
seen as the domain of engineers, it’s less
recognized that there can also be ample
opportunity for technically oriented peo-
ple even if they don’t hold a university
degree. Martyn Parker, who acknowledges
that he didn’t excel academically because
he found school learning to be “generic,”
proves that you can build a strong oilfield
career – and make an impact – as long
as you are motivated and able to quickly
learn on the job.

“I was the kid who couldn’t learn in
school because most of what they taught
didn’t interest me,” said Mr Parker, who
currently serves as Vice President at Pruitt
MPD Services. “But I always had a lot of
curiosity about how things worked. And if
I found something that I was interested in,
I’m all in.” For example, he would earn A+
in physics, a subject he liked, but “fail in
other areas miserably.”
In the late 1980s, after completing high
school and short stints in the UK’s Royal
Navy and as an offshore roustabout for
Rowan Drilling, Mr Parker found himself
working for Schlumberger in his home-
town of Great Yarmouth. At the time, the
town was still a busy service hub for the
gas field of the Southern North Sea.

Although he was a maintenance tech-
nician, he put himself through offshore
survival training, believing the certifica-
tion would come in handy when the right
opportunity came along. His instinct soon
panned out, when he got the chance to
go offshore with a well-testing team as a
60 last-minute substitute. On-the-job, hands-
on learning proved particularly effec-
tive for Mr Parker, and through his work
with Schlumberger over the next 12 years,
he soaked up vast amounts of technical
knowledge around drilling and comple-
tions. It was also during this time that he
was exposed to underbalanced drilling
operations (UBO), which then led to oppor-
tunities over the next two decades manag-
ing projects for Shell, designing systems
for Halliburton, and serving as a company-
man for TAQA Energy.

By the early 2010s, Mr Parker had start-
ed thinking about starting his own MPD
company. He had a business plan and con-
ceptual designs for MPD equipment but
knew he needed a partner. So he turned
to Pruitt, a company that already manu-
factured high-pressure rotating heads but
lacked specific MPD expertise. A meeting
during an IADC conference in 2014 helped
to advance the collaboration, which even-
tually resulted in Pruitt MPD Services.

However, by the time the company had
built its first MPD package in 2016, the
industry was in a full-blown downturn.

Just as the company was in the final
stages of readying its equipment for opera-
tions, Mr Parker even recalls having to
turn down a contract because he realized
the equipment was not yet ready to deploy.

“When I take on a job, I want to deliver
success,” he said. “So we decided not to do
it, even though industry was in a down-
turn and Pruitt had already invested a lot
of money. But we knew that if we couldn’t
do it right, we would rather not do it at all.”
While it would be six more months
before Pruitt got another job, Mr Parker
said he knows it was the right decision.

In the seven years since, Pruitt’s MPD
Services department has grown from a
handful of employees and one MPD pack-
age to 50+ employees and 17 MPD pack-
ages. Mr Parker attributes this success
to how the company is managed, which
aligns with Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle
concept. “People don’t buy what you do;
they buy why you do it” is an oft-cited
statement from that 2009 Ted Talk. “I
make every person who joins my team
watch the Golden Circle,” Mr Parker said,
adding “my ‘why’ is just to be recognized
as a really high-quality service company
providing MPD services.”
As Chairman of the IADC UBO & MPD
Committee, Martyn Parker is leading the
group to develop MPD software testing
guidance. The group is also finalizing
the Influx Management Annex for API RP
92M and 92S.

Once customers buy into this “why,”
it’s up to the Pruitt team to find the
“how” – which for Mr Parker means hav-
ing “technically safe” equipment for his
employees, as well as proper risk manage-
ment processes in place.

Another key tenet of Pruitt’s “how” is
to always work in accordance with the
industry’s recommended practices (RPs)
for MPD and UBO, no matter if they’re
working on US land or in the Gulf of
Mexico. The same practice of operating
at or above industry standards is non-
negotiable, Mr Parker said.

Too often, he added, he sees companies
trying to apply MPD without first reading
and understanding those industry RPs.

Failure is a common result, which can put
rig crews’ safety at risk.

To address this challenge, the IADC UBO
& MPD Committee, which Mr Parker is
chairing this year, has created guidance
tools that are freely available on the IADC
website. “You can lead the horse to water,
but you can’t make it drink. I hope that
companies will hear this message and
make use of the tools that we’ve provided
as a committee.” DC
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022 • DRILLING CONTRACTOR
Scan me to access free
IADC guidance for UBO
and MPD techniques.

bit.ly/3VnEgPC



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