Hello Jim,
Two companies were working at te time, Nowsco and Fracmaster. You are right, Fracmaster was losing money in Russia and was eventually bought by BJ Services back in 1999. There was a lot to do to make Fracmaster profitable again, and some interesting stories.
The other company, Nowsco, also merged with BJ in 1996, focused on Coiled tubing and fracturing; it had a good market share in Canada and some state-of-the-art technology badly needed by BJ, including the circulation analysis software. Data acquisiton and e-mail software was also on BJ's list, but that is another story.
I knew one of the Windows developers, Bill Aitken, who was part of the team that ported the HP-41 into Borland C++. Do you know him?
As for links, most of these events predate the Web, but I think it is possible to look around.
About your question, yes, I am an oilpatch guy, and check your mail for some more details.
Juan