When Mark Burris purchased Superior Products in 2011, he said the going likely would be slow. He didn’t anticipate adding to his crew of three. OIL AND GAS production is nothing new to Burris, 51.
The plant’s output then was pipeline closures, assembled here from parts made elsewhere.
But Burris and plant manager Randy Misenhelter aren’t ones to dally. Today, the plant has seven full-time employees, and has plans to expand, Burris said.
Superior Products now more closely resembles Burris’ previous venture, Precision Pump, the down-hole pump manufacturer which he sold to Cameron Industries in 2008.
“You can grow in a down market,” Burris said of today’s market conditions.
Oil is selling in the mid-$80s per barrel, while natural gas is hovering at about $3.50 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Superior has added chokes and chemical pumps to its inventory, but the closures remain its flagship product.
Closures give access to a pipeline to insert pigs — tight-fitting devices — for cleaning and as an isolation barrier so two products may be moved at one time, such as diesel fuel and gasoline.
Most of Superior’s products are sold for the Pennsylvania-Ohio, North Dakota and in Kansas-Oklahoma fields.
“We’ve had our first international sale,” to one of the republics in the former Soviet Union, Burris said. The international market constantly is being explored.
Helping expand the market is Iolan Fred Apt, sidelined when Haldex Brake closed, who is doing contract engineering work for Superior.
While assembly was the initial role of Superior Products, Burris and Misenhelter grew impatient with the slow delivery of parts. That prompted the duo to manufacture many of the parts locally.
Closures components still are made in Canada and China, but “we’re looking at what we can do to bring that in-house,” Burris said.
Parts for chokes and pumps are made here.
A bump in employee numbers is expected as oil and gas production ramps up in the United States.
“They’ve quit drilling for natural gas right now, but that will be back,” Burris said.
New procedures in horizontal drilling, especially, will increase oil production, Burris said. That method of extracting oil from formations far underground is reaching the point where all of a large lease may be tapped from a single rig.
“I’ve been involved in the business since I was old enough to crawl into Dad’s pickup truck,” he said.
Dad is Richard Burris, who in a partnership with Ed Noland, Chanute, supplies about 20 percent of the natural gas Iola purchases.
Superior is moving ahead
