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For more than 100
years, Dresser-Rand or one of its forerunners has been building the muscle of
America's industrial might. Today the company manufactures and
services a full line of energy
industry-related equipment under a variety of venerable nameplates: Clark,
Coppus, Dresser-Rand, Ingersoll-Rand, Moore, Murray, Nadrowski, Terry,
Turbodyne, and
Worthington. The
company manufactures, sells and services large,
highly engineered centrifugal and reciprocating compressors, steam and gas turbines,
and control systems. The bulk of the manufacturing is in the
Southern Tier cities of upstate New York: Olean, Painted Post and Wellsville,
as well as in Le Havre, France.
Dresser-Rand's earliest connection to its
current product lines is in 1840 when Henry R. Worthington designed and built the first direct-acting
steam pump. In 1871, Simon Ingersoll received a patent for a rock drill that was
used for drilling blast holes. Compressed air was used to power the
drills. That
led the company to develop compressors to meet the air-power needs which began the
company's long involvement in compressed air and related technologies. In 1898, the Rand
Drill Company merged with Ingersoll.
In 1880, Solomon R. Dresser patented a
cylindrical packer that sealed crude oil from water and other elements in a well.
Forerunners of the Dresser-Rand Company were well underway.
Since their inceptions, Dresser Industries and
Ingersoll-Rand had through the years acquired other companies that complemented their
businesses such as Clark, Terry, Turbodyne, and Worthington. For example in 1912,
Clark Bros. Company moved to Olean, New York, and built its first centrifugal
compressor.
Ingersoll-Rand and Dresser Industries formed a partnership joint venture in
1987, combining their collection of related businesses and forming Dresser-Rand Company.
Five years later the partnership was realigned, giving Dresser Industries 51 percent
ownership, and Ingersoll-Rand the balance. In 1998, Dresser merged with Halliburton and is
now known as Halliburton Company. In 2000, Halliburton sold its
interests in Dresser-Rand to Ingersoll-Rand. And then in 2004,
Ingersoll-Rand sold Dresser-Rand to First Reserve Corporation, the leading
private equity firm specializing in the energy industry. In 2005,
Dresser-Rand completed its initial public offering and became a publicly
traded company.
What began as a series of manufacturing
operations to serve mining, drilling and manufacturing industries in the United States,
today is a world-wide force serving the oil and gas, chemical, petrochemical, and power
generation industries. Dresser-Rand sales outside the United States account for
approximately 70 percent of its revenue. Most large projects lie outside the U.S.,
including the world's largest liquefied natural gas facility located in Trinidad; the
world's largest methanol plant in Puntas Arenas, Chile; the largest FPSO -
Chevron's Agbami project off the coast of Nigeria; a large natural gas reinjection
facility in Uzbekistan, and most major oil field operations, both land
and platform, throughout the oil-producing world.
Major manufacturing plants outside of the United
States include plants in Le Havre, France; Kongsberg, Norway; Oberhausen and
Bielefeld, Germany; and Ahmedabad, India.
In 1995, Dresser-Rand's Turbo Products operation
introduced a new line of centrifugal compressors called DATUM. With flow rates of
200,000 to 500,000 cubic feet per minute, and efficiencies increased from 82 percent to 89
percent, DATUM has become an important contributor to significant increases in
Dresser-Rand Company sales and operating profits.
Other new product introductions include a
high-efficiency synthesis-gas steam turbine designed for ammonia and methanol production
applications, the high-speed VECTRA gas power turbine, as well as new DATUM
models - the DATUM C and the DATUM I, which combines rotary separators with
the DATUM compressor to become an integrated compression system.
Dresser-Rand operations and their respective
locations are:
Dresser-Rand Headquarters:
Houston, Texas
Regional Centers
North America Operations (NAO): Olean, New York
European Served Areas (ESA): Le Havre, France
Asia Pacific (AP): Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Control Systems: Houston, Texas
Product Services: Houston, Texas
Manufacturing Operations: Kongsberg, Norway; Le Havre, France;
Bielefeld; Germany, Oberhausen,
Germany; Ahmedabad, India; Houston, TX; Burlington, IA; Olean, NY; Painted Post, NY; Wellsville, NY.
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