Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question will be from Geoff Kieburtz with Citigroup.
Geoff Kieburtz - Citigroup
Good morning.
Gary Flaharty
Good morning Geoff.
Geoff Kieburtz - Citigroup
Chad, I guess I would like to focus on the guidance for the international growth and sort of frame it in terms of - trying to understand how you are thinking about it as we look at Baker's international growth over the last couple of years. It has lagged most of the peers. Your guidance for '08 is also a little bit lower. Is that a concern of yours, is there some expectation that that will change as we go through '08 and get into 2009?
Chad Deaton
You know Geoff, first our growth was 21% international '06, '07. You are right. It's not keeping up with some of the peers. Some thing that we are consciously aware of. Couple of years ago, we sat down and what we said is that we think that the West to East needs to happen and we pointed out several key countries where we wanted to do several things. We wanted to expand the build our infrastructure. We wanted to make sure we are in recruiting and getting the people.
Very importantly to us, as we wanted to just not have a presence in these countries, in order to win a contract, but we wanted to be able to make sure that we were there, executing properly and that we solve the technical issues of our client. So, we identified we were on to the countries Brazil, Russia, India, Qatar, Saudi, and Malaysia. These were all countries where Baker Hughes in essence had a presence. They sold products there. But we really didn't have the infrastructure that was needed. So, we targeted these countries and in everyone of those today, we have a very strong market share position. We are drilling some of the most complicated wells. And we are solidly there, and it's not that we are just in and out.
Now you look at some areas, where we are not growing as rapidly. In those, areas places like Mexico, Africa and specifically Nigeria, Angola, Libya to some degree. You got Asia, and this is Phase II. Now this is part of the $1.3 billion capital program that we have going through next year. We will start doing the similar type thing in those areas, and establishing ourselves stronger and to be able to expand those.
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