TARA Energy Services

Blessed to be a blessing

From green initiatives to local apprenticeship programs, TARA Energy Services is set on turning the oil and gas industry upside down – and making it more sustainable in the process

Working closely with North America’s largest oil and gas providers, TARA Energy Services (TARA) has built a strong reputation for its comprehensive line of well testing services with its cutting-edge equipment, which seeks to positively change the industry in terms of optimizing its sustainability – all in just eight years of operation.

Established in 2014, the Canada-based energy innovator burst onto the scene in spectacular fashion: a pioneering product was brought out by TARA that could heavily mitigate emissions by creating a closed loop production system. As we will discover, sustainability is at the core of TARA – the green beating heart of the entire operation.

Since then, the innovator has continued to offer state-of-the-art custom equipment and field service solutions for the energy industry. Indeed, TARA now boasts the largest comprehensive high-pressure and high-volume fleet in North America, as well as numerous other divisions for maintenance, heavy hauling, and logistics, all supported by highly trained technicians.

“Working in tandem with our impressive team is a full fleet, which supports the frac, coil, and flow phases of completions,” explains TARA CEO Scott Bissell. “The fleet is built to a process specification, so that gives us the ability to streamline the manpower requirements and increase safety statistics in a positive manor. Streamlining TARA’s services in this way means that we can flow multiple wells to single separators, all while recording and obtaining upstream data.”

TARA works with a vast collection of blue-chip companies and organizations in Canada and the US. Contracts are long-term, ranging anywhere from three-to-ten years, thereby anchoring the firm’s place at the fore of its niche. “While fulfilling our contracts, we’ve also been able to optimize clients’ capital spending, all the way from completions to production, so that they are better able to capture emissions,” adds Scott. “That’s all made possible through the completely closed loop system that TARA introduced. By capturing all vent and waste gas off the vessels, we’re giving our clients more value to the pipeline, but we’re also making their wells flow at zero emissions to atmosphere, getting them better royalty returns from the government in turn. The key, here, is eliminating gas that would otherwise escape up the flare stack by locking it into pressurized storage.”

TARA’s attention to sustainability and Net Zero goals, Scott tells us, really began in earnest five years ago. Though, undoubtedly, the green commitment underpinning much of its operation is manifest in that first innovative emissions-mitigating product, which catapulted the company up the ranks of its market niche. “We were the ones that brought pressure storage into the completions of production, and that was new to the market from both a volume and design perspective,” he continues. “When we began working on reducing CO2 emissions, we were achieving figures of about 74 percent being mitigated. Now, with our second phase, which we launched alongside a government program, we’ve been able to accomplish a 98.9 percent emissions capture rate. Moreover, since we own the process for this technology, we will soon be able to bring it to the US.”

The world is changing in two key ways, both of which are inextricably bound to one another. First, in a negative way, because climate change is rapidly disrupting billions of lives. Second, in a positive way, because some companies like TARA are recognizing the devastating impacts of the climate crisis that we’ve found ourselves in, and they’re intent on doing something about it.

“Before it became a big public headline and buzzword, TARA was diligently working on sustainable solutions to complex industrial processes,” Scott comments. “Sustainability and emissions mitigation are the foremost priorities of TARA. It’s something we’ve been working on before the commitments to a Net Zero world started pouring in. We have been working on this for the last five years. Though the oil and gas industry will be here for the long run, there is a big push to make it greener, and we are at the head of that drive.

“We’re not looking at Net Zero by 2050 – we’re doing it today,” he asserts, highlighting the profound impact that the climate crisis has had on the company’s overall mission. “Everybody’s focused on the year 2050, but we’re doing it in 2022. That’s because we have an obligation to fulfil. We are blessed to be a blessing, helping the community and the circles we operate in. It’s a very important point for our company’s culture, and it spans from the bottom to the top: every member of staff is involved; it’s not just executive-driven, it’s employee-driven. What is at the forefront of people’s hearts is at the forefront of our organization.”

To become more socially sustainable, TARA has recently focused its attention on the relationships it has with indigenous communities and groups. All team members are, for example, required to take a course in aboriginal awareness to better understand the culture, history, and politics of indigenous people.

As Scott elaborates, there are numerous sustainable threads running throughout TARA: “We run our own in-house TARA University, as we like to call it,” he explains. “Here, apprenticeships and other programs are made available to the public, including through local colleges – mechanics and engineers are created through proactive initiatives such as these. We love welcoming new people into the industry, and consequently we put a lot of time and money into their training.”

TARA also puts a lot of time into fortifying its own internal processes. This meant that, by the time the pandemic had firmly established itself, the impact of Covid-19 was almost rendered null. “We took a different approach during the pandemic and the challenging years that followed,” says Scott. “We didn’t cut our employee base. Loyalty to our staff paid off substantially: we set in motion a positive evolution, actually scaling up with our clients throughout the pandemic. We led the charge; we were able to build equipment to facilitate scaling requirements coming into these better times.”

As Scott has made abundantly clear, TARA is a growth-focused company, always intent on doing more and doing better. Turning towards the future, then, it’s certain that this will remain the case.

“We’re focused on growing the Canadian market at the moment,” concludes Scott. “But we’re very eager to rejoin the US market. We want to bring our emissions mitigation strategy to the US, and continue to change industry standards by focusing our attention on generations ahead of ourselves. We continue to raise the bar and push our industry forward. The oil and gas industry is not going anywhere. But, because of this, we do feel an obligation to improve emissions mitigation through continued innovation. One step at a time, we will help achieve a better future for all.”

TARA Energy Services
taraenergyservices.com
Services: Industrial equipment manufacturer and tester