SAN FRANCISCO — Baker Hughes, the world's third-largest oil-field services company, said Friday that it was expanding its stake in the massive Russian oil and gas market through its acquisition of Siberia-based Oilpump Services.
The deal, for an undisclosed amount, will double the U.S. company's share of the Russian market for electrical submersible pumps, or ESPs, which are used to increase the flow from a well, Baker Hughes said in a statement.
It is just the latest deal in the oil-field services sector, which has seen a flurry of takeovers in the past year as the major players seek to expand their service offerings to meet a growing need among their clients for one-stop shopping.
Oilpump Services is the second-largest ESP company in Russia, the world's largest ESP market with 70,000 installations, and Baker's purchase comes on the heels of it closing a $6.8 billion purchase of BJ Services in late April.
It also comes just over a year after smaller rival Weatherford International announced that it would buy the oil-field services unit of TNK-BP, Russia's third-largest oil producer, for $480 million.
Russia is Europe's biggest supplier of gas and pumps 10 million barrels of oil per day, making it the world's largest crude producer at current levels.
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