Pure Energy

Celerant's van Hasselt on the opportunities, challenges and the sector's future Shifting global demand, cutting edge technologies and new breeds of collaborative relationships between companies at the wellhead are just a few of the hot topics facing the always-moving energy industry, and with change inevitably comes opportunity. Maarten van Hasselt, Celerant's recently minted Senior Vice President and Americas sector global energy lead, says unique pressures facing the energy market are forcing companies to operate leaner, more efficiently, and perhaps most interestingly, together, as the world's remaining underground stores of oil become more remote, and require more advanced technology to tap into.

Consulting: Tell me about some of the challenges facing the energy consulting market these days?

van Hasselt: If you look at the energy sector as a whole, there is a very big field of specialist companies that work in this area. I like to go back to what my previous CEO always said, there are three hard truths: demand will go inexorably up, as you've seen recently in Indian and Pakistan; the easy oil and gas has been found, so it becomes more technologically difficult to find but also is found in less accessible places like the North Slope in Alaska, also climate change, CO2, everything around that. At the same time, there is an increasing gap in the talent pool. So it's getting more difficult, we need more and we have fewer people that know how to do the work. In that whole arena it's obvious that people are looking for support, and consulting companies supply that horse power, critical thinking to help make their operational strategy happen. That's what we're focusing on.