Rule of Thirds: Breaking It Down in the Midstream

Photo of pipelines stretchign the horizon.

With shrinking E&P budgets, weak commodity prices, the rise of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, the need for greater emphasis on customer satisfaction in the oil and gas industry has never been stronger. Providers of midstream services, and their stakeholders, ignore the evidence at their own peril.

Results from EnergyPoint Research’s 2019 Oil & Gas Midstream Services Survey make the case, as companies rating in the top third of the survey register investor returns well in excess of the bottom third. Continue reading “Rule of Thirds: Breaking It Down in the Midstream”

Yes, It Pays to Keep Customers Smiling

Featured Image: Yes, It Pays to Keep Customers Smiling

Yes, it pays to keep customers smiling—even in the midstream.

As midstream activity marches on in North America, customers show preferences for providers with strong operating and project-development skills. Professionalism also matters.

The need for solutions is diverse and widespread. Constraints in West Texas―ground zero of U.S. shale-oil production―crimp output. Natural gas in Appalachia seeks conditioning and outlets. Gulf Coast petrochemical and LNG facilities demand feedstock. Canadian producers beg for market access. Continue reading “Yes, It Pays to Keep Customers Smiling”

Opportunity Looms in the Midstream

Midstream Assets

Consisting mostly of publicly traded master limited partnerships (MLPs), oil and gas midstream suppliers, for better or worse, are beholden to a breed of investor as interested in the return of capital (i.e., distribution yield) as in the return on capital (i.e., unit-price appreciation and/or distribution growth).

With oil and gas prices currently weak, the attractiveness of MLPs as income and growth investments is waning.  Midstream customers, made up mostly of upstream entities, are hunkered down.  Drilling and development budgets have been slashed, and suppliers of all stripes are being asked to lower costs till it hurts. Continue reading “Opportunity Looms in the Midstream”

MarkWest, Williams & Sunoco Logistics Garner Midstream Kudos

EnergyPoint Header Image

As customers in the hotly contested midstream services segment have demanded more reliable operations and deeper product-development capabilities from their suppliers, MarkWest Energy once again has emerged as best-in-class as it captured top honors in EnergyPoint Research’s 2013 Midstream Services Customer Satisfaction Survey. 

The recently announced results cinches back-to-back customer satisfaction victories for MarkWest, which also took first-place overall in EnergyPoint’s midstream survey conducted in 2011. The biennial study, which dates back to 2006, is the leading independently conducted benchmark customer satisfaction study focusing on U.S. midstream service providers.

Continue reading “MarkWest, Williams & Sunoco Logistics Garner Midstream Kudos”

What’s Wrong with the Midstream?

Featured midstream image

A feature of EnergyPoint Research’s ratings is that they span numerous segments within the oil and gas industry. We currently publish ratings for contract drilling, oilfield services, oilfield products, and natural gas midstream services. Since our surveys are performed via a standardized process, the data enable fair comparison across segments. This reveals a balanced understanding of how segments and their participants are viewed by customers.

Below are the surveys conducted by EnergyPoint since 2003. The list is in descending order based on the average Total Satisfaction ratings of all suppliers rated in each respective survey: Continue reading “What’s Wrong with the Midstream?”