The Importance of International Markets

From the earliest days of Westinghouse’s land-based gas turbine business, markets outside of the U.S. played a very important role in the growth and survival of the business.

Since earliest applications were primarily in the petrochemical industry, there were many units sold to oil refining and gas-pipeline companies going back to the first W31 (3000hp) units sold in the mid-1950s for installation in Japan, Sumatra, Cuba, and Aruba. These were all used as mechanical drive prime movers.

Other important early international markets included Libya, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Iraq, Syria, and many units, e.g. W92 10,000hp units, built for TransCanada and Westcoast Transmission, et. al. for pipeline compressor stations in Canada. The largest international project at the time came to be somewhat fortuitously around 1955 when Esso, as the Creole Petrol Company, was looking to replace several two-shaft GE mechanical drive units that had failed. Those units had shown Esso that a two-shaft solution was unsuitable for handling the tricky job of compressing of wet associated gas for reinjection under Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.

Westinghouse offered a direct-drive concept in the W101, which proved to be the replacement that was needed to do the job. During the 15-year period from 1956 through 1971, Westinghouse installed nearly 50 W101 direct-drive units on a several floating platforms moored in place above the producing wells. Kudos to Engineering Manager Tom Putz, Sales Manager Don Jones, Project Engineer Joe Yindra, and others on the team,including those at Esso's engineering department, who made this a major success story and helped put Westinghouse gas turbines firmly on the map.

Another important international project for Westinghouse Gas Turbines was one of the earliest heat recovery applications. This was for the Panama Canal Company and utilized two W171 (12,000kW) units around 1963.