The world in a nutshell

While other oil and gas companies have struggled in the sluggish economy, a bunch of nuts have an Odessa business cracking the worldwide market.

Absolute Filtration Industries Corp., owned by Jerry Hensley and Jim Patterson, has increased revenue from $1 million to $10 million in the past year, said Patterson, who also serves as sales manager.

What’s driven the success of the business, headquartered out of a complex on East University Boulevard, has been its Hydroflow filtration system. Hensley said Absolute Filtration is one of four companies in the world that uses walnut shells to clean water used in oilfield water floods and other disposal situations.

The units save time over traditional sand-based filters, plus they allow drillers to save oil that may otherwise have been lost, Patterson said.

Hensley started Absolute Filtration in 1989, but was in the nutshell filter business for years before that. He developed, along with his brother, nutshell filters that he sold patents to what are now his company’s much larger competitors — Germany-based Siemens AG, Veolia Environment SA of France and Cameron International Corp. of Houston.

He said his six-person company has an advantage over the larger corporations.

“We figured a cheaper way to do it, a more economical way to do it,” said Hensley, the company’s chief executive officer. “One where you solve a problem that they have.”

And Absolute Filtration hopes to provide quite a few solutions for Petrobras SA, the largest company in Latin America. Absolute Filtration recently took a $10 million order to supply the Brazilian energy giant with nine of its largest 15-foot-diameter Hydroflow units.

“That will be bigger than this office and nearly 30-feet tall,” Patterson said, “with 50,000 pounds of walnut shells inside.”

And the company is doing business in other parts of the world. Along with Brazil, it has representatives who work to locate customers in Canada and Italy.

“They kind of know the hierarchy of working with the oil companies in these countries,” Hensley said. “We just don’t know these companies. We don’t know how they work.”

Patterson, who came on board as a partner in 2007, said the key to success is using crushed black walnut shells, which can be used in everything from women’s makeup to cleaning aircraft turbine blades. The shells are between five and 10 times harder than English walnut shells.

“It’s basically cleaning by friction,” he said.

And now the company has done business everywhere from Indiana to Azerbaijan. But many have been smaller “turnkey” projects.

“This big job we just got with Petrobras has kind of moved us into a lot bigger league,” Hensley said.

Patterson hopes it will be good for the company’s future.

“This is what we consider to be the Pandora’s Box,” he said. “If we can prove ourselves on this, it’s only natural we can get a lot more business from Petrobras and other companies.”

Since Absolute Filtration has limited manpower, it has to bring in other companies to build its vessels. Hensley said this benefits a number of local companies, including Odessa Pumps, which he just placed a $1 million order with.

Odessa Pumps President Toby Eoff said the Absolute Filtration order would be the largest his company gets this year. In tough economic times, that can be very helpful.

“Selfishly, it helps our company,” Eoff said. “But a job of that profile, it brings good attention to the whole area as far as people just knowing the capacity to do that kind of work here in Odessa. It’s a good calling card for the community.”

Hensley has sold companies before, and while he said he’s not actively looking for a buyer for Absolute Filtration, he wouldn’t turn down a phone call.

“It’s like anything else,” he said. “If you add enough zeroes…”