There’s a popular motto among digital entrepreneurs who celebrate disruption: ‘move fast and break things.’ It was the founding creed of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and it reflects a culture of rushing new products and apps to market.
At Three60 Energy Group, we take a slightly different view. Since our creation in 2017, and especially during an eventful and positive 2019, our strategy could be defined as ‘move fast and build things’.
This approach has defined our rapid growth as a force in the Tier 2 energy services market, through an ambitious buy-and-build strategy, backed by our forward-looking and supportive private equity partners.
In that time, we transformed a great concept into a profitable energy services company, operating across multiple geographical locations, and now employing over 350 highly skilled people from Aberdeen to Kuala Lumpur and from Bergen to Brisbane.
We’ve acquired four businesses that complement each other – both geographically and operationally – and developed a fifth service organically, to create a unique and agile offering across the entire exploration and production (E&P) asset lifecycle.
Our strategy ensures we deliver for our customers, irrespective of their size or complexity, through a culture of challenge, where reward is based on trust, collaboration and delivering added value.
Our work for several oil majors, for example, focuses on individual service requirements, whereas for independent E&P and smaller operators we offer a complete ‘plug-and-play’ model where we do everything but own the actual oil or gas. This delivers a fully integrated offering including subsurface management and wells delivery – a unique proposition as a Tier 2 service company.
Looking ahead, we see growing demand for Tier 2 service companies, particularly in more mature provinces. With the majors increasingly divesting assets to smaller independent operators and recognising that no one acquires an asset to decommission it, we see great opportunities in servicing a growing mature field redevelopment market.
Our competitive edge here is sharpened by us deploying our proprietary subsurface digital technology, Poseidon, developed by our subsurface team. This pioneering LTRO (Locate-The-Remaining-Oil) software reduces the time taken to crunch complex reservoir data from approximately six months to just six weeks and is effective in locating remaining moveable oil in place in mature fields.
Our expertise in late-life and ultra-late life asset management is helping our customers manage the delicate balance between increasing efficiency and reducing operating costs while ensuring the highest safety standards at all times.
We’ve demonstrated that OPEX can be reduced by over 60%, by safely optimising processes in the last five years of operation. Identifying cost-savings, in some instances, of over £100 million over a five-year period to unlock value and extend field life.
2019 also saw us successfully enter the renewables sector. In South East Asia, for instance, we secured a number of new contracts to provide marine and operations geoscience services for the country’s offshore wind-energy projects. We plan to replicate this model around the world.
Looking ahead, 2020 will be another year of growth and development for Three60 Energy. We plan to open an office in London to further strengthen our subsurface and wells capability in the UK and launch our services into the growing African oil and gas markets. We may also make further acquisitions to extend our portfolio and differentiated energy services capability.
Far from agreeing with the motto to move fast and break things, at Three60 Energy we appreciate the wisdom of a different business maxim: ‘If you build it – deliver safely, passionately and efficiently – they will come’.
Walter Thain is chief executive of Three60 Energy
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