OEG Energy site visit & a 'crude' chat with its boss

Last week The Oilholic headed to sunny Scotland for a very interesting visit to one of OEG Energy's industrial sites in Aberdeen, with none other than its Chief Executive John Heiton. 

The scene of the walkabout was the global mission critical offshore logistics group's state-of-the-art Cairnrobin chemical plant.

This impressive six acre site, just south of Aberdeen's city centre, serves as OEG's storage, servicing and processing hub for a wide range of chemicals and aviation fuel on behalf of a veritable-who's-who of the energy business. It was fascinating to observe the place, its personnel, their processes and top-notch North Sea standard protocols on safe and secure handling of their operational tanks. 

The site visit was followed by a long overdue conversation with Heiton about how he is reshaping OEG along two offshore business silos under one group umbrella - traditional offshore energy and renewables. As it appears, after three years of painstaking work and over a dozen acquisitions, in 2023 the company managed the milestone of a near 50%/50% split in revenue between its traditional and renewables units. 

Heiton described it as the inexorable direction of travel for OEG, with double-digit growth expected for OEG's renewables business over the near-term, and solid single-digit growth for traditional energy boosted by operations in emerging oil and gas extraction hubs like Guyana and Suriname, and established ones in Africa and the Middle East. 

The OEG boss - who's company has its footprints in over 60 global locations - also said he'd encountered the same hike in shipping rates between Asia and Europe via the Red Sea as the readers of this blog (and The Oilholic's sources in Singapore) report, i.e. an uptick of 300% to 350% since November! 

That's when attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels began on international energy and commercial shipping in the key maritime artery. 

"However, shipping rates from Australia to China have also gone up and there are no security issues there! So while some of the cost hike (since November) is related to the troubles in the Red Sea, shipping lines may also be using it as an excuse," Heiton said. 

On the subject of oil demand growth in 2024, OEG is going with the International Energy Agency's conservative forecast of 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd). "Part of it has to do with operational prudence in going for the lower end of global oil demand growth forecasts, rather than much higher forecasts out there. 

"However, where demand growth goes this year does not materially impact us as a business because a lot of global spare capacity is onshore based. Volume produced by the offshore fields we service doesn't make much of a difference to us as a critical logistics provider. They'd ultimately still require broadly similar levels of outsourced services we provide to the facility/platform in question."

Away from the exclusive snippets for this blog, do read The Oilholic's full interview with Heiton for Forbes here. It offers a much wider perspective on OEG's journey as a company in recent years. That's all for now folks, more blogging to follow later this week. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2024. Photo 1: John Heiton, Chief Executive of OEG Energy (left) with Gaurav Sharma. Photo 2: Specialist storage tanks at OEG Cairnrobin Chemical Plant, Aberdeen, UK, February 2024.