Midland firm goes international with Middle East branch

Permian Basin energy companies have been exporting more than crude oil and natural gas — they’ve also been exporting equipment and expertise around the world.

This global demand has opened up new opportunities, most recently for Midland-based Shepherd Safety Systems, which is opening a branch office in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

“I originally started looking at this several years ago,” Seth Long, Shepherd president and CEO, told the Reporter-Telegram. He said representatives of national oil companies had visited his office and that he had visited the region. Last November, he said, he returned to attend ADIPEC, the world’s largest energy industry gathering.

“I didn’t sit down for four days, talking to people, understanding their needs,” he said.

The company specializes in fixed and personal industrial gas detection, AI-ready system integrations and operational support services for the oil and gas and industrial sectors. Long said he found there is a big need in markets in the Eastern Hemisphere for robust wireless gas monitoring. He said operators and national oil companies in the region were pushing to increase monitoring but lacked the hardware.

“We saw a big need, and we came in at an interesting time,” he said. Shepherd began operations March 1, just as the U.S.-Iran conflict was beginning, he said.

Asked why Shepherd chose Abu Dhabi, Long said a large U.S. operator that was a client had entered the market “and asked us to come along. It’s blossomed from there.”

He is seeing interest not just from the United Arab Emirates and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, but also from the Asia-Pacific region — including Thailand, Malaysia and Australia.

He said operators in these countries operate cleanly but “the difference is they’re behind the level of technology we have in the U.S. Part of that is they’ve been shut off from the rest of the world and now they’re almost at the forefront of bringing in new technology.”

The company will deliver advanced gas detection technologies designed to improve operational safety, environmental monitoring and real-time hazard mitigation across complex energy operations.

“This is a big deal for Shepherd,” said Long. “The fact that we’re able to take a product and grow it and take it outside of Midland, outside of Texas and New Mexico, outside the U.S. makes me proud. We’re a small cog in the wheel but what we do matters, it’s important to the world, it’s important to Midland and it’s important to the people at Shepherd.”

Long said having a front-row seat to events in the Middle East since early March has helped him see the impact on global markets.

“Asia-Pacific and Australia are turning the faucets on — they don’t want to be beholden to the Middle East,” he explained. “(The conflict) has created a global opportunity for us, for our technology and what we’ve perfected in Midland. People are seeing what happens when a section of oil gets cut off.”