Calgary’s Gibson Energy Inc. is beefing up its U.S. onshore services with a US$445 million agreement to buy privately held Omni Energy Services Corp., based in Louisiana.

Gibson’s U.S. presence historically has been oil hauling, injection stations and marketing. The agreement with Omni would add environmental services and fluid handling, as well as close to 1,100 employees now headquartered in Carencro, LA.

The acquisition “provides an avenue by which to benefit from current industry trends such as increased environmental and regulatory scrutiny, increased fluids production and services intensity associated with more complex multi-stage, water-based hydraulic fracture horizontal drilling and increased production and drilling for oil and liquids,” Gibson said. The merger also gives the company the opportunity to expand Omni’s service offerings in Canada, which could include the oilsands sector.

“Omni broadens Gibson’s footprint in most of the major U.S. liquids-focused basins, provides the scale we believe is required to grow the environmental services business in North America, expands upon the Palko Environmental Ltd. acquisition in December of 2011 and adds new customers in the U.S. to whom we can promote the rest of the Gibson product suite,” said CEO Stewart Hanlon.

“We are witnessing first-hand, industry trends including increasing water-based horizontal well fractures, higher residual water production and increased environmental and regulatory scrutiny” and the Omni acquisition offers opportunities to service those areas.

The acquisition “provides a sizable footprint and scale to continue building momentum in the U.S., a market with approximately three times more oil and gas production than the Canadian market,” according to the company. The merger also would provide “increased scale” in many onshore basins, as well as offering a “new geographic platform” in the Gulf of Mexico.

In connection with the acquisition, Gibson agreed to sell on a bought deal basis, an aggregate of 15.84 million subscription receipts for C$22.10 each with expected gross proceeds of C$350 million.

Omni is expected to generate about US$80-82 million in pro forma adjusted gross earnings this year. The merger is expected to be completed by the end of the month.