Russian Company Plans Workforce Expansion In Tulsa, OKC

An expansion plan is taking shape for a Russian company working on oil and gas technology in Tulsa.

They're hiring both here and in Oklahoma City, building on a foundation that started in Tulsa.

This expansion is at Borets Weatherford. They make pumps and motors, primarily for the oil and gas industry.

Their expansion is a milestone for the company and solidifies Tulsa's position in this niche of the oil business.

Borets Weatherford is already well established worldwide in the business of electric pumps and motors, primarily for the oil industry.

Two years ago the company opened a 26-employee research and development lab in Tulsa, and now they've expanded to 90 employees.

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They design new equipment, build prototypes and test what they've built.

And with this ground breaking, the company is solidifying plans to build a 15,000 sq. ft. research and development lab that makes Tulsa the center of new products for the global company.

"Those are going to be technologies that will allow us to provide our customers with pumps that they don't now have available to them, that will solve problems that exist today in the oil industry," said Kim Arnold, CEO of Borets Weatherford.

Borets Weatherford only has a handful of competitors, but several are nearby because Tulsa is a hub of the submersible pump industry.

The technology is used for oil, water, and the movement of any fluid from one place to another.

"This industry is a big, big deal to the city of Tulsa, certainly to the oil and gas industry," said Mayor Dewey Bartlett.

Bartlett, with a background in oil, says these jobs are exactly what Tulsa needs.

"It's going to be very good. They are hiring people, spending a lot of money and they're staking a flag that says Tulsa, Oklahoma is going to be the center of the universe for their company," he said.

Borets Weatherford plans to hire 30 people for the R&D lab over two years, most of them engineers to design equipment and machinists to build what they've designed for testing.

The new lab is supposed to be done by the end of the year.

They'll have about 125 of the estimated 18,000 jobs related to oil and gas in Tulsa.