Cudd Offers Summer Interns Hands-On Experience

For 10 weeks, Cudd Energy Services crews had every move questioned, every decision studied, every task watched.

They weren’t being watched by supervisors conducting evaluations. Rather, it was a group of 10 college students participating in the company’s annual summer internship program.

Joe Lee, Cudd’s technical manager, estimates the company has been conducting the summer program at least the past 10 years.

“Each year is different. If activity is up, we have more participants. If activity is slower, we have less,” he told the Reporter-Telegram by telephone. He said this year’s participation was up.

“This summer’s group was excellent, one of the best we’ve had,” he said.

One thinks of engineering or geology students spending their summers interning at oil production companies, where they spend much of the time in the office, doing paperwork or in front of computers.

“But we provide an experience oil companies can’t give,” Lee said. “It’s all done at the well site. They participated in the work going on. We give them hands-on experience. So when they graduate and go on to design jobs, they have a better understanding of what’s going on at the well site.”

From the company’s perspective, Lee said management gets to meet possible future employees “or if they go to work for one of our customers, they could become a customer.”

Cudd’s internship program began when a customer wanted a summer job for his college student son, but one that gave him different, hands-on experiences. Since then, participants are not actively recruited, but are friends, customers or friends and family of customers or family members, according to Lee.

“We really try have local people or people who have local contacts so they can stay with someone,” he said.

Lee recounted that a former intern was the son of a friend and how that former intern now works at Parsley Energy in Austin.

“Whenever I see him, he always thanks me for the experience of working at the well site. He tells me the experience was invaluable to his career,” he said.

Participant DJ Galvan, an engineering student at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, agreed, saying he expects the experience to pay dividends in the future as he pursues his career.

“It gave me a hands-on experience that I would not have received generally,” he told the Reporter-Telegram by telephone. “They move you through the whole company to all positions. I got to work with new equipment throughout the program. It will not only make me a better employee, but a better engineer because I was able to be at ground zero.”

Galvan already holds a degree in geology from Angelo State University and is pursuing his engineering degree at UTPB.

“My family has been in the industry for quite a while,” he explained. Working in the industry, “I get to meet great people, and I value what the oil and gas industry does for our country.”

Texas Tech student Heath Edgerton told the Reporter-Telegram he believes the practical experience he gained helping Cudd’s fracturing crews will make his resume stand out.

“It’s hard work; not just grunt work, but there’s a lot of technicality, a lot of number crunching,” he said. “It was hard work — 16, 18 hours a day. I sure learned my mind clicks a lot faster than my body. There were multiple days when were out there helping crews rig up and rig down — swinging a sledgehammer in 100 degree heat.”

From the equipment operators to the managers at Cudd, all were helpful and informative, Edgerton said, and, most importantly, kept the interns safe alongside the crews.

Not only did he gain a better understanding of the completion and production process, but he learned how different companies have different preferences and different definitions of efficiency.

That could come in handy as he works toward his goal of owning his own oilfield services company, he said.

“It would be excellent for me to go and gain as much knowledge and experience as I can with a reputable company like Cudd, where things are done right instead of just enough,” Edgerton said.

In addition to Galvan and Edgerton, summer interns included Muhammad Khan, Taylor Cooper, Colton Matus and Muzammil Said of Texas Tech University; Vincent Baiano of Louisiana State University; Hill Davenport of the University of Tulsa; Robert Dickey of the University of Texas; and Donovan Degnan of UTPB.

Their 10-week program included observing and participating in the execution of acid jobs, testing acid and frac fluids, performing solids analysis and breaker tests in the lab and several weeks participating in frac jobs and coiled tubing field operations. The final week included job design training and regulatory compliance training.

Source:Midland Reporter Telegram