Mark Campbell spent eight years at Eni, winding up last year as senior maintenance engineer after nearly a decade at Chevron Corporation as an instrument and electrical advisor across operations in Barrow Island, Houston, South Korea and Angola.
After a globetrotting career not unusual to an oil and gas professional, he has settled in Darwin, which OGS believes is emblematic of the Top End's transformation from a working holiday destination to a serious resources hub where workers can raise a family.
OGS started out in 2011 as a multi-disciplinary engineering service provider to the oil and gas, mining and infrastructure sectors at the height of the boom, and has since gone on a spree of launching new companies and acquiring others, targeting Australia and Southeast Asia.
Last year, OGS launched hazardous area inspections entity Inatex, acquired Singapore-based recruitment consultancy Jadeclover and secured the license for Silverhorse Technologies' project control software.
Over the past 12 months OGS has also secured a core team, with Campbell being the latest addition, and the company's workload is continuing to grow, with increased activity for bidding particularly since November and the amount of enquiries about work has more than doubled, CEO Jason Antunovich told Energy News.
In August he hired a former Wood Group leader, veteran process engineer Peter Winterbourne, to head up OGS' optimisation services, and the company has recently worked with AWE on peer reviews for the operability of its plant in the onshore Perth Basin.
Robert Strickland from WorleyParsons also started as the firm's business development manager in February.
New phase
Antunovich said Campbell's newly created role gave OGS "strength and a foundation, with someone who wants to stay in Darwin who has a vision of building a Darwin organisation similar to what we have in Perth, but with all the infrastructure and corporate structures".
"We want a similar sized organisation in Darwin in three years around innovation technology in the O&M space," Antunovich told Energy News.
Until 2020 OGS will target various sectors aside from oil and gas, including the power stations for the Territory's growing aquaculture industry which also requires power plants, with the belief it can offer cost savings from being in the area, with technology such as predictive analysis.
"Darwin at the moment is on the cusp of becoming a hub to attract people who want to stay and sustain the industry, right down to workers' children continuing school through high school and university," Antunovich said.
Antunovich believes "two little cities" have effectively been built in Darwin with ConocoPhillips' Darwin LNG and now Inpex' onshore facilities for Ichthys, and more work will come when Shell's pioneering Prelude floating LNG project goes online this year, according to reports.
Darwin has the infrastructure that's needed just to support all that, and while the O&M is a big opportunity, other parts of the supply chain also need tending to.
"You've also got brownfields modifications, you'll need to support the local contractors that may get a chunk of work that can't execute it," Antunovich said, listing but a few examples.
In the short-term, OGS in Darwin is going to be an execution operation, growing to the point where it will start looking at acquisitions there.
"We want to continue the mindset we've had down here [in Perth]," he said.
"If we managed to survive the downturn here, and still be on projects, and we've done it in Southeast Asia, then why can't we replicate that in Darwin?
"The key is get involved in the community and give a suitable workload so people can plan. The hardest thing is telling someone ‘we'll give you 12 months'. Would you move your family for 12 months?"
He sees synergies between OGS' offerings to Darwin's energy and defence sectors.
"[Darwin] has the ships, they're doing the first strike force … If you put a jet engine in a plane or a compressor, you still need to monitor, look after and control the fuel, with metering stations etc. Across the industry it's similar," he said.
"As Inpex transitions into O&M they're going to look locally at who can assist them going forward. The government, I believe, is very patriotic towards Territorians and seem to want to help you if you want to get involved, not if you're going to just do the job and walk away.
"Part of the strategy is to partner with the indigenous, to provide workforce training, they're the challenges we look forward to.
"We've got the foundation set here that can give that support Mark to build the execution team. Are we talking about winning $100 million worth of work in the next year? No.
"We're taking small steps to be there long term and be part of the Darwin community, not the short-term grab."
