“People ask us all the time why we picked Cordell and the fact is, we were here first. You know we lived here and then we started a business so it just made sense to start the business here. I wouldn’t want to do business elsewhere or support another school system. I wouldn’t want to be a part of another community. This place is just too good to us,” said Dale Selman, founder of Helios.
Helios is one of the most reliable, most technologically green and advanced chemical injection pump companies in the world, and it is located right here in Cordell. Their rapid growth of delivering data-driven chemical program performance has ultimately led to their recent need for expansion. Helios builds solar powered chemical pumps for the oil and gas companies. The majority of the chemicals they pump are used to protect the pipelines, metal and everything used in oil and gas. The pumped chemicals help prevent problems such as freezing and other natural issues that come with the operation or scale, a solid deposit that grows over time hindering fluid flow through the pipelines. “Our pumps are solar powered so they don’t require any power from the location to drive the pump,” explained Selman. “We are one of the standout green guys. Most operations on oil and gas sites run on gas. They’re pneumatically operated so they can use the natural gas from the well to run, but the problem with that is some of that gas ends up being blown out into the atmosphere. With an electric pump that is not an issue, there are no carbon emissions.”
Helios has been in business since early 2016. Within the last six years, they have sold around 14,000 chemical pumps. Helios does business all over the United States. However, the vast majority of their business is done in the mid-continent region. The mid-continent oil field is a broad area containing hundreds of oil fields in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Every year Helios has progressively gotten busier than the year before. With a modus operandi in automation, they have developed an app that allows companies to see if the pump is running smoothly, what the chemical level is, if the solar panel is charging and if the battery is good. “We have a bigger customer base. We are working for major companies. Those guys don’t live in the world of boom and bust. One of our customers is bp (British Petroleum). They order their chemical pumps from us and we build them and ship them as needed,” said Selman. “We were surprised over the last two years; the events really affected our supply chain. A lot of the equipment, parts and pieces required to build our chemical pumps are now inaccessible and we can’t get them. So, we are having to vertically integrate to take care of that supply chain problem and just do it ourselves.”
With the parts, pieces and equipment Helios needs to build their pumps inaccessible, Helios has begun the expansion to their new building that is still under construction. They hope to have it completed and ready for operation around late spring. In the meantime, Helios is going to make room and move some of their machines to bring in highly sophisticated machines and equipment into their current building that are fully automated. “A lot of this was the things we were outsourcing, getting from Asia and other parts of the world. We’re literally going to be bringing a lot of the manufacturing that we were doing all over the world back into Cordell. It’ll be pretty neat,” expressed Selman. “Getting a lot of this manufacturing back in house is going to create more jobs and it’s going to make the company more efficient. We’ll be working with raw materials.”
“We hope to gain more market share and deliver a more reliable and better product and try to create more jobs while making customers happy in the meantime.” In a recent interview, Selman said he appreciates the support from the community and he couldn’t imagine a better place to work. He said Cordell has been really great to them.