Q. What is the official name of your company?
A. E3 Environmental, LLC. E3 stands for Energy, Environment, Experts.
Q. What do you most want people to know about your company?
A. Environmental regulations are here to stay and unfortunately they do not remain static, changing frequently and adding uncertainty to a project. E3 is an environmental consulting firm that is focused exclusively on the energy industry. In this industry, at the pace that projects are developed, the logistics and engineering required, not to mention the financial considerations, all of which is coupled with the performance expectation that has no tolerance for failure; you need E3 on your project team. I think our tag line “Enhancing execution with experience” says it all.
Q. Where is your company located?
A. Our main office is located in St Paul, Minnesota, with project offices strategically located in North Dakota in the towns of Dickinson and Crosby.
Q. What year was the company founded and by whom?
A. William “Bill” McCarthy founded the company in September, 2009.
Q. What is your company’s primary business activity?
A. Environmental consulting to the energy industry; providing environmental compliance support from the well head to the burner tip. Our services include siting of pipelines, gas processing plants and related facilities, construction permitting, environmental inspection services, and compliance documentation and reporting. We provide environmental support services for new projects as well as operating assets.
Q. Are there important projects the company is currently a part of or has done recently?
A. 2012 was a busy year for E3 with a good amount of work associated with projects located in North Dakota and Montana all of course associated with the Bakken. We were involved with several projects that required North Dakota Public Service authorization. In each of these cases we coordinated all of the required field surveys and agency consultations and then prepared the application, provided expert testimony at the public hearings all necessary steps to gain PSC authorization to construct. These projects included the siting of NGL transmission pipelines for ONEOK Rockies Midstream, L.L.C. and Hess; two separate crude line projects for Plains All American, L.P.; and a major relocation of Magellan’s existing pipelines. In addition to the pipeline work, in 2012 we compiled the PSC application for ONEOK Rockies Midstream’s Garden Creek 2 natural gas processing plant located near Watford City.
We also worked a fair amount on upstream projects, providing permitting services for several hundred miles of gathering pipelines and associated well tie-in projects. On these types of projects we typically provide environmental oversight for clients that include securing the necessary permits, approvals and compliance documentation. While it is true that gathering lines are relatively “lightly” regulated from an environmental perspective they are not unregulated. For example, many of these installations occur on federally managed lands by agencies including US Forest Service, US Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Land Management. These activities will trigger some form of National Environmental Policy Act review and E3’s services include NEPA compliance support.
Beyond the Bakken, E3 provides environmental compliance support for a wide range operating energy assets, these services include the typical air, water and waste reporting and documentation for various midstream and local distribution firms. E3 does a good amount of business by providing environmental compliance support to pipeline integrity programs; this is due to E3’s customized approach which is ultra-responsive, accurate and budget sensitive.
Q. How many employees does your company have?
A. We are a rapidly growing firm; we have 17 full time technical employees and several more contract and part-time personnel. As with anybody working in the Bakken today, E3 is actively recruiting for several positions that remain open, so I encourage your readers to apply.
Q. Is your company expanding any of its operations or locations?
A. In 2012 we added a job office in Crosby, ND. This was in response to an upstream project awarded mid-year to E3 that has the potential to span a number years. We are currently in the process of evaluating office locations to support clients active in the Marcellus, Eagle Ford and Mississippi Lime plays. Many of the environmental services that we offer can be performed some distance from the actual project area. The majority of the permitting is conducted from our main office allowing our local offices to provide field services.
Q. Is the company changing any of its services or products?
A. No changes, rather expanding our service offerings in two key areas. First environmental inspection, our clients realize the value that trained environmental professional can bring to a project when under construction and have with increasing frequency asked E3 to provide this service. In response to this demand we anticipate adding up to five new full time employees to our payroll in 2013. We have also witnessed increased interest in our emergency response planning services.
Q. What is your company’s main strength or its edge over the competition?
A. As the owner of the company, I would say it is my employees. E3 is comprised of a staff of environmental professionals that are all extremely sharp, dedicated and they take their various roles on any given project to heart exhibiting the pride of ownership in the work that they perform on the projects which they support. I am very selective when it comes to hiring new talent and work diligently to seek out the best and the brightest personnel in the business. Beyond the quality of the staff that we have assembled, our size and structure also sets E3 apart. We are still a relatively small organization and clients recognize the benefits that a smaller, streamlined organization can bring to project that larger firms just can’t duplicate particularly in terms of responsiveness and lines of communication.
Q. What new markets, clients or projects did your company attract in the last year?
A. In 2012 most of our growth was organic, internal referrals within organizations that we were already under contract. I believe this speaks well of the services that we delivered. This resulted in geographic expansion of servicing offerings, notably into Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Q. What is the most challenging work/contract the company has undertaken?
A. Every project that we have been involved with has had a very aggressive schedule and I do not see that changing anytime soon. Your readers might be interested to learn that one of our more successful endeavors recently involved the USFWS and the conservation easements that they hold on wetlands. E3, working with the USFWS and our client designed the project in a way that avoided impacting these features which saved the project well over 18 months of potential regulatory delays.
Q. What are the biggest obstacles to completing work your company undertakes?
A. Agency responsiveness or the lack of it, which I believe is primarily due to the workload that these public servants are attempting to manage with limited staff and shrinking budgets. In today’s political environment and public fiscal policy it is increasingly important to compile clear, concise and complete permit applications to avoid unnecessary delays.
Q. What do you see as your company’s biggest challenge in the next five years?
A. Maintaining the corporate culture and office environment that we created when we started the company as we continue to grow. We will continue to take a deliberate and pragmatic approach to our growth to nurture the culture that our staff and clients have to come to know.
Q. What is your company’s safety record? What steps does the company take to ensure a safe work environment?
A. Thus far E3 has maintained a perfect “no loss work” record. We have safety training courses that all staff are required to orient to when first hired and then again on an annual basis. We also reinforce our “safety first” corporate policy via a safety related message that is incorporated into all staff meetings and functions. E3’s personnel also participate in all project specific training when deployed onto a project site or to a client’s operating facility.
Q. Has your company been involved in any community projects or charity events?
A. In 2012, E3 made charitable cash donations to Big Brothers and Sisters Program and to the Friends of Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge. The later donation was earmarked for habitat improvements for migratory birds and to support education program targeting school aged children.
Q. What is the address of your company’s Web site?
A. www.go2e3.com
