Big 6 Drilling

Big "6" Drilling Company is generally considered as having pioneered the "turnkey" contract for oil and gas companies along the Gulf Coast. There are three types of contracts that drilling companies provide the oil and gas industry, according to Weldon Smith, chairman of the board of Big "6" Drilling Company. They are "daywork", "footage", and "tur... nkey". Big "6" management believes that the industry, particularly small oil and gas operators, are in need of a drilling company that contracts to drill wells at its own risk and expense and furnish everything including a log to total depth, the point at which the contract is completed. In 1949, Big "6" first offered the "turnkey" contract an today it is considered one of the major reasons for the company's success. Weldon Smith has been a part of Big "6" Drilling Company since 1949, only four years after it was organized. Original owners of the firm were H. Buddy Andres, president, J. Brown Cutbirth, and Walter Stockard. The drilling trio named their company after Big "6" Sullivan, a 300-pound drilling superintendent for Goldrus Drilling Company, who was originally in the deal, but chose after only a few weeks to leave. After four years as president of the company, Andres realized he was more interested in being a drilling and production manger than running the company, so he resigned and went on to become one of the most respected drilling and production men in the business. Upon his resignation in December 1948, Smith, who was assistant sales manager for Hunt Tool Company in Houston, was offered the presidency by Stockard. Smith accepted the position of president and moved into his offices in the Oil & Gas Building at Dallas and Louisiana in downtown Houston. Today Smith smiles when he recalls what this position entailed. He was not only president of BIG "6", but also the bookkeeper. He had one office employee, a part-time secretary. From the beginning , stockholders made it a policy not to spend money that the company did not have. As in the case of Weldon ...Read More