On May 1, a large oilfield services company, Production Services Network, celebrated its first anniversary as a freestanding entity, having completed a $280-million, management-led buyout from KBR, a year before the latter's recent separation from Halliburton.

Previously PSN, based in Aberdeen, was known as a division of KBR, but today it is increasing the visibility of its own identity as a stand-alone, says Zeffrey Lucas, PSN operations director, Americas. "It's challenging in that, before, we had the umbrella of Halliburton, and we have greater visibility in Aberdeen than we do here," Lucas says. "Our customers knew us as KBR, but internally, we were always called Production Services.

"So, our saying is, it's great to be born, but we have 30 years of experience behind us and 8,000 employees in 25 countries." Lucas, who joined the company in 2002, has more than 25 years in the industry and is a petroleum engineering graduate of Louisiana Tech University.

In February, the private company moved its U.S. headquarters to Houston. It has 1,000 employees in the U.S. During its first year as an independent company, it grew North American revenues by $50 million and added 200 jobs.

PSN provides brown-field services to the oil and gas and process industries: project start-up, maintenance and management; engineering, construction and commissioning; and operations support and maintenance.

Now that the first year of transition is over, which included handling such things as IT, accounting and personnel issues, PSN will focus on growing its U.S. presence, Lucas says, and hiring more U.S. employees.

The company operates in three core U.S. regions. In the Rockies, it works for Marathon Oil Co., BP Plc and others. Its support for Marathon has expanded from supplying a few roustabouts in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, to providing some 65 people in full-time production operations. It also manages the man camp that supports ConocoPhillips' Rifle, Colorado, drilling operation.

In California, about 500 PSN employees provide Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s vast oil operations at Elk Hills with operations, maintenance, planning and support to the field's gas-processing facilities, and employees who also provide roustabout service and production support in the field.

In the Gulf of Mexico, PSN has contracts with BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other companies to provide operations, maintenance, engineering and construction support personnel and services.

Worldwide, the company has operations in countries as diverse as Kazakhstan and Russia's Sakhalin Island; Egypt, Chad and Cameroon; and Vietnam, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Last year it commissioned Buzzard, the largest field development in the UK North Sea in a decade.

"Over the past five years, PSN's global revenue has more than doubled and international business activity has increased by 250%," says Jerome Lynch, international operations director. "Our international workforce has grown to 5,000 employees, 98% of whom are nationals of the countries where we work. We recruit and train local people who enrich our global network by bringing their experience, culture and diversity into our business."

International activity accounts for 43% of total revenues.