Unison Drilling Inc2070 FM 3176 , Devine, Texas, United States

Unison Drilling Inc. is an independent family owned company specializing in oil and gas drilling. In 1985 a partnership was formed by Maurice Stricker and Annie Mello (brother & sister) with one rig located in South Texas. Today Unison Drilling Inc. currently operates 6 rigs drilling for oil & gas ranging in horse power from 450 to 1000 HP. and depths from 4,700 feet to 14,000 feet.     At Unison Drilling: Safety is our highest priority. We are members of Disa, a third party drug testing and monitoring company. We are also members of ISNetworld. We do companywide OSHA certifications every January even if some cards are not expired. Our Safety Team is highly trained and are rotated in & out of OSHA ?Train the Trainer? classes throughout the year

Established in 1985, drilling Oil & Gas wells with Rig #1 in a small area of South Texas. Expanding to 13 rigs of assorted sizes today covering almost all of South Texas. Our goal is to provide our customers with service that will lower their overall drilling cost by providing them with the highest quality and most efficient drilling contract service available. We take a lot of pride in our equipment, personnel and safety record as we strive to exceed our customers expectations of an Oil & Gas Drilling Contractor

At Unison Drilling we have our own trucking fleet to move our own rigs. This way we don?t have to wait in line for someone else to move us.     Unison employs our own general mechanics to take care of all of our vehicles and we employ our own rig mechanics that specialize on drilling rigs such as Rotary Tables, Drawworks, Brakes, Clutches, and Pumps. This helps to keep any downtime to a minimum.     Unison Drilling Inc. is committed to our clients and to ourselves to be the best contract drilling company, regardless of size. With quality equipment, experienced crews and professional management working closely with our customers, we believe if we Work Hard & Stay Honest we should be around for a long time to come.

Our Past

Maurice Stricker and Annie Mello in Devine, Texas, established Unison Drilling, Inc., in March 1985. It is headquartered in Devine, where Annie was born and reared. As children, she and Maurice worked for their fathers water well drilling business there and Annie received her "schooling" on drilling equipment and the language and terminology used around drilling rigs. The familys eight children - five boys and three girls - were all roughnecks on their fathers drilling rig at one time or other.      When Annie and Maurice became partners in the drilling business they began searching for their first rig, driving to Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi before finally leasing a rig from a MIssissippi contractor. Nine months later they purchased their first rig from a Texas drilling contractor.      Maurice loved attending oil field auctions to buy drilling equipment. Annie sometimes accompanied him, though she didnt much care for the auctions.

"I just enjoyed being with him," she remembers. "Even though I was his sister, he would take the time to explain how something worked, or why it would not work. Once he sent me to an auction in Odessa by myself to buy a rotary. I thought I had made a good buy until we got it back to the yard and Maurice looked it over. He told me the only thing he would do with that rotary table was to set it in the front yard and plant flowers in it. After that, he never sent me to another auction."      When Maurice was killed in an auto accident in 1994, Annie arranged to have his body hauled to the little country cemetary in Moore, Texas, on the bed of his 1991 Peterbilt haul truck.      "I think we made the funeral director a little uneasy, but I knew Maurice would have fired me if I hired a hearse to transport his body when he had plenty of trucks to do the job," she says.      After Maurices death, Annie decided to carry on the drilling business instead of selling the two rigs they owned at that time. With the help of her husband, Anthony; her son, Michael; her brother, Dwaine; and her tool-pusher, Clement Wofford, Unison Drilling has continued to grow. The company now has seven rigs drilling in the South Texas area.      "I dont plan on becoming a big drilling company," Annie says. "I want to stay small. I like knowing exactly where my rigs are working and knowing my employees by name and face. I like knowing every piece of equipment on my rigs and where every dollar is spent. "I cant wait to get to heaven so I can talk with Maurice. I think by now I coud teach him a few things about the drilling business."