Dear Editor,
When you read that someone Guyanese born occupies a prominent position in a big company, this grabs your attention and makes you full of pride at the achievement of one of your fellow nationals. Newton Liu, a Guyanese born of Chinese background is a leading authority on resin-coated-proppant technology, an expertise in demand by oil-drilling companies.
Liu lives in Texas working for the largest engineering company that mines for products to enhance oil and gas drilling. He heads the research department. Liu has offered his services for oil drilling in Guyana.
Liu was born and raised in Georgetown attending Central High. He received his Masters’ degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Ottawa. He started out his career as a Development Engineer at the Research Lab of the bauxite-aluminum plant in Linden in 1983. After only seven years working at the bauxite plant and at the height of the depression-driven exodus out of Guyana in 1990, Liu reluctantly emigrated to Canada. For the next 18 years, he has racked up a resumé of wide-ranging work experience in mining companies – from managing sand mines and processing operations to product quality control, to supervising research labs, to streamlining and trouble-shooting production operations. Then he decided to move to the US for a more lucrative position.
Today, he is the International Product Service Manager for Santrol, and is respected for his expertise in the manufacture of resin-coated proppants used in oil/gas drilling and extraction operations. Resin-coated proppants are coated sand or ceramic grains which when pumped with fracturing fluid down the well-bore and through perforations in the casing thousands of feet below the ground or ocean bed create fractures in oil/gas-bearing rocks. This process is called hydraulic fracturing. The proppants keep the newly created fractures open and provide a highly porous path for oil or gas to seep into a direct path to the well-bore resulting in increased production. Liu’s job is to test for quality control and for size, specific gravity, resin content and resin curability on sand or ceramic grains.
Santrol produces these proppants and sells them by the thousands of tons to major oil-field operators like Halliburton, BJ Service and Schlumberger.
Liu travels a lot around the globe to test for these proppants. When he is away from his office-cum-lab in South Houston, he is in China performing product service management duties at a resin-coating proppant plant owned and operated jointly by Fairmount Minerals and a privately-owned Chinese proppant company.
He is now in charge of joint operations with a Chinese investor group, manufacturing resin-coated proppants in China.
Liu said he is willing to share his experience and expertise with the Guyana government in oil-drilling operations but he does not know if there will be any offers.
“With or without a contract, I am always at the service of the government and people of my native country,” he said. He added Sam Hinds knew him personally having worked together at Linden. The government should take up his offer.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
