It’s a damp, late October morning. A chill is in the air, but the cold that’s coming in another month or so is what’s of most concern at U.S. Energy Services’ 12th-floor office overlooking the western suburbs.
Soon, pipelines carrying natural gas to the Twin Cities will be pushed to capacity as Minnesotans fire up their furnaces for the season. It’s the responsibility of this roomful of buyers and analysts at U.S. Energy Services in Plymouth to keep the fuel flowing to the company’s customers, even on the coldest of winter days.
It’s a calm scene for a space where more than $400 million worth of transactions passed through in 2008. A financial network’s tickers scroll past on a muted television, while employees quietly toggle between price charts and instant-message windows, which they use to talk with buyers and sellers.
The day before, in Beatrice, Nebraska, there was a mechanical failure at a pipeline compressor, which pushes gas through the pipeline. Since that meant gas wasn’t flowing normally through one of the pipeline system’s primary arteries, U.S. Energy Services’ employees were negotiating to transport their customers’ gas via a different route. “Every day has its own set of potential issues,” says Todd Overgard, the company’s president.
U.S. Energy Services’ primary business is helping large users of natural gas buy direct from producers or pipelines instead of settling for standard utility rates. That couldn’t be done before the federal government deregulated natural gas in the 1980s. Now, two decades later, U.S. Energy Services is preparing to capitalize on another regulatory shift.
Congress is widely expected to pass legislation this year that will either tax carbon emissions or establish a carbon cap-and-trade system. U.S. Energy Services believes that it’s well positioned to help its clients meet new carbon reporting requirements and participate in what some predict could become a $100 billion carbon-credit trading market.
“We’re sitting between the producers of energy and the consumers of energy. We’re in an ideal place to participate,” says Casey Whelan, the company’s vice president for business development. “It’s too early to figure out exactly what is our role, but we know there will be a role for us.”
The changes could usher in a reprise of the company’s beginnings, when its founders carved out a role created by changes in natural gas regulation.
