We have been considering expanding our business into other parts of the country and so I have been wondering where the market hotspots are for oil and gas, pipeline and powerline surveys excluding Texas and North Dakota. We are a firm of about 50 employees. We are not looking to do this immediately - this is in our 5 year plan. Any thoughts?
Maybe ask your current clients where they would like for you to open a shop so they can use your services there too.
At 50 employees you should be ready to hire a marketing person who knows how to put together the new location and capture the new clients.
When opening a new office it may be a good idea to open the office in a place where the work you want to do is increasing. No sense in waiting five years if the time is now. Work may be declining by then. Timing is everything.
This may be a silly question but where would one find a marketing person?
As far as marketing goes, we go to some of the oil & gas conferences but those rarely produce new clients. We get master service agreements but not any actual work out the deal. Sometimes we'll go into a company's office and speak with them face to face and again we get an MSA but not actual work.
> When opening a new office it may be a good idea to open the office in a place where the work you want to do is increasing.
We have asked our clients about this and the majority of the time it doesn't really matter where we have the office since we send out crews to a location and they stay on a job for 6 months and then move on to the next job halfway across the state.
So really I guess I'm looking for some suggestions as to where the oil & gas work is increasing without relying on existing clients.
Thanks for the suggestions 🙂
Someone may know by happenstance, but I believe most people would know because they service that industry. In which case I wouldn't expect any information to be forthcoming.
🙂
> Someone may know by happenstance, but I believe most people would know because they service that industry. In which case I wouldn't expect any information to be forthcoming.
>
> 🙂
Hah! I'm not looking to take anyone's favorite fishing hole. I don't need sub-centimeter specifics of where the work is, how about just the state?
PA, WV, OH Better set up an office with a pls in the appropriate state.
Alaska was still producing oil. From what I've heard, there is a lot of fracking in the area north of Fort Worth.
Set one up in Kentucky and hire me....;-)
> This may be a silly question but where would one find a marketing person?
http://www.smpscareercenter.org/home/index.cfm?site%5Fid=48&mtod=1
Well in that case I know SW PA should be a sustained growth area because it contains wet gas. Most of the "easy money" days are gone, though because relationships are mostly gelled. Or at least that is what I hear.
First comes the leasing, then the drilling, then the pipelines.
Find out where all the leasing agents are packing the courthouses. There was someone here just in the last couple of weeks talking about how packed the courthouse was.
James
Seems to me the best place for a "new" office is near your clients' HQS. When it's easy to get you into their office quickly, it's more convenient for them to confer and ask questions face-to-face. They really don't care where your crews are, they probably DO care where YOU are. Closer the better, I'd think ...
AK is right on the cusp of a large diameter natural gas pipeline. Should be good for years of work. Just need to shoot the dam politicians and get on with it!
-JD-
I'd say you already nailed the hot spots. ND and TX specifically.
The other states between are locked up in political mire (sp?).
5 or 10 year plan? Really? You need to be there NOW!!!
Chasing the oilfield is a sprint not a marathon, no way to predict where it will be 5 years from now.