Brothers join hundreds who have left big companies to start their own, despite the risks

Solve Hetland was 40 years old in 2016 when he decided to make the leap into entrepreneurship.

Drawing on his experience as a casing operator with oilfield services giant Weatherford and as a rig operator at Frank’s International, now a part of Expro, he had an idea for an oilfield tool that he knew would solve a problem that could be a cause of frustration — and lost rig time — when removing old wells.

“It is a known problem in the industry that threads on your pipes may suffer from rust, corrosion, or mineral build-up, all of which can make unscrewing a threaded pipe extremely difficult,” says Hetland, founder and chief executive of Stavanger area-based service company NorOilTools.

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