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A MOMENT WITH
The Guy Who Could Fix Anything An Interview with Bill Wilhite
Bill Wilhite , an El Paso native , first found a place for himself as a ‘ mister-fixit ’ working on farm machinery , cranes , cell towers , etc . But after catching a job as an oilfield roustabout , doing the jobs nobody else wanted to touch , Bill would have an encounter that set his pragmatic mind ablaze . After sleepness nights and many false-starts , Bill would eventually invent the Valve Xchanger , a born-from-experience solution to fugitive emissions from valve replacement .
By Payne Harrison
Bill Wilhite makes a strong first impression : a compact , wiry individual wearing jeans and a work-shirt caked with dust , redolent with grime and grease . A typical day would start with him and his colleagues reporting to their company ’ s shop to receive their marching orders for the workday . This could be anything from plumbing to electrical repairs , setting up a pumping unit on a drilling pad , or doing a spot of welding . Additionally , there were the all-time favorites : cleaning out septic tanks and port-a-potties . As Bill observed , “ A restaurant ain ’ t gonna work without a dishwasher , and oilfields ain ’ t gonna work without roustabouts .” In his years as a handyman , Bill had earned a reputation as someone who “ can fix anything .” But he was a rookie , at least to the roustabout role , when one day he drew a work order entirely novel to him . He was told to report to an oilfield tank storage facility where a “ hot valve ” needed to be changed out . Never having performed this task before , he arrived at the storage facility , where oil production from the field is stored before it is trucked out . There he was taken to the tank with the “ hot valve .”
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A novice in this regard , he soon learned it was a leaking valve on a tank with oil behind it – a lot of oil .
It is common in this situation for the oilfield manager to call in a “ vacuum truck ” – a large rig with a mobile storage tank on its back . The truck operator would normally hook a hose onto the leaking valve , open it up , then pump the oil from the storage tank onto the truck ’ s tank . Once the storage tank is drained , the hose is disconnected , and the valve is changed out . That accomplished , the oil is pumped from the truck and back into the storage tank . “ I learned that even with a vacuum truck the process can take hours ,” Bill recalled . “ You must wait for the truck to show up , and depending on how busy the vacuum truck company is , you might wait one or two days . All the while , the valve is leaking oil and emissions . Once the truck arrives and the job is done , they send a bill that can be over a thousand dollars … to change out a single valve .” But what happens if a vacuum truck is not available , or the operator does not want to cover the expense ? Enter the El Pasoan roustabout .
On his inaugural hot valve job , Bill was told a vacuum rig was not available and that he should go ahead and get the old valve off and replace it with a new one .
With trepidation , he removed the valve and out spewed the inevitable stream of oil and emissions . As fast as he could , he shoved a new valve into the oily cascade and screwed it on , closing it . But the damage was already done . There was a black stain on the ground , and the emissions had escaped into the atmosphere .
He had to use a backhoe to dig out and dispose of the contaminated soil , but the emissions were irrecoverable . Eventually , Bill would encounter numerous other hot valve situations . The recurring and unmistakable waste of the process would eventually be compounded by a tragedy that shocked the industry . A father and son team were changing out a hot valve on a tank that was leaking hydrogen sulfide gas when they were both suffocated by the fumes and died . That was when Bill decided there had to be a better way to handle leaking hot valve situations . ‘ Mr . Fixit ’ set his mind to finally solving this vexing problem .
At this point it should be noted that Bill had no formal education in engineering ; over the years his mechanical talent came to the surface as he dealt with real world problems , earning him the moniker of the handyman who “ could fix anything .” He never put pencil to paper to sketch out possible solutions to the leaking valve problem . Instead , before he drifted off to sleep at night , he would piece together in his mind ’ s eye the different elements that would be needed to execute a valve changeout without leaking fluids or emissions .
He knew the first element required to solve the leaky valve conundrum was some kind of stopper in the tank pipe , just upstream of the leaking valve . But how would you get the stopper in place without opening the valve to spills and emission leakage ? And even once the stopper was in place , how would you change out the valve and then retrieve the stopper ?
In his mind he broke down each component of the overall problem , then thought through the various individual solutions and married them together . He estimates that he worked through about fifteen different iterations of what a workable prototype would look like before trying to fabricate one .
And it was just at that moment his roustabout company stood down for a break over the Christmas holidays . Having rare
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14 Valve World Americas | February 2025 • www . valve-world-americas . net