Back in their days at Crestar Energy, geologist Jim Hunter used to sidle up to his pal, engineer Martin Peters, every few weeks. Then Hunter would nutshell his latest pitch for a break-out independent business of their own.

In response, the careful Peters would whip out his calculator. He’d patiently explain why the scheme couldn’t possibly fly.

“I’d go back to my office and do some more mapping,” Hunter laughed slyly.

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
From right, Enermarket Solutions Ltd. president Martin Peters and VPs Jim Hunter, Shaun Alspach, and Tony Sequeira use the Internet to bring together buyers and sellers in the energy business.

Then, one day in the late ’90s, the numbers added up. Even Peters had to admit his buddy might be on to something big.

Ultimately, Hunter, Peters and their partners did hit pay dirt, by applying fresh twists to an old wrinkle. Today, their brainchild, Enermarket Solutions Ltd., is the fastest-growing full-service, Web-based asset exchange in the Canadian energy business.

From right, Enermarket Solutions Ltd. president Martin Peters and VPs Jim Hunter, Shaun Alspach and Tony Sequeira use the Internet to bring together buyers and sellers in the energy business. Say this much for the oilpatch. Environmentalists despise it, G-8 protesters assail it and liberals mistrust it. But it continues to provide fertile ground for the creative impulse.

The energy industry probably represents the final frontier for intelligent young go-getters with brains, moxie and a better idea.

Hunter and Peters, now the company president, drafted two key players for the opening-day roster: geologist Shaun Alspach and veteran marketer Tony Sequeira.

At first, they clung to their day jobs, logging long nights in a Kipling Square basement office, brainstorming around a picnic table in what laughingly passed for a boardroom.

But after its official launch in August, 2000, Enermarket serviced 65 corporate clients within the first 18 months.

“Our first contract was Numac Energy, with half a million acres of land,” Alspach grinned. An auspicious debut, to say the least.

Think of an oilpatch asset exchange as a real estate MLS for producing properties and drilling prospects, of which thousands are bought, sold, swapped and dumped each year.

Enermarket uses the Internet as a tool to bring together buyers and sellers. But this company goes beyond a minimalist, bulletin-board approach.

Enermarket’s client package includes a research/consulting component that leaves no stone – or mineral deposit – unturned.

“Try to imagine a residential real estate agent who comes in and redoes all your landscaping, cleans up your bathrooms and upgrades your kitchen cabinets,” Peters painted the picture.

“What we do is like lifting up the carpet to see if there’s hardwood underneath.”

In other words, when a vendor “lists” an asset with Enermarket, the company puts its technical pros to work on an exhaustive analysis of the property.

The resulting profile can exceed 40 pages of hard copy and take 500 hours to compile. It includes royalty structures, risk factor analyses, pipeline proximity, lease expiry dates, ad infinitum.

“We dig pretty deep,” explained Hunter. “We ask: ‘What else can be done to this property to increase its value?’ We’re looking for those unsuspected jewels that make an asset more saleable.”

Or not. Due diligence is an important part of the job..Occasionally a vendor is less than overjoyed by the emerging data.

“Like, when we have to tell a client: ‘You no longer hold the mineral rights to this property,’ ” Alspach chipped in.

By the end of the day, Enermarket knows the asset better than the client ever did. Sometimes, the data’s so encouraging, a vendor will reconsider and decide to hang on to a good thing.

As a bonus, about 1,800 subscribers now receive free daily e-mail updates that post assets as they become available. These freebie newsflashes include every asset licensed the previous day, as well as up-to-the-minute land-sale results.

Unlike some bulletin-board asset exchanges, which deal exclusively in properties in production, Enermarket lists a broader cross-section of assets: from production properties to drilling prospects to land parcels that offer a degree of drilling potential.

The need for an Enermarket-type service became clear to Jim Hunter during his Crestar days. He remembers one attractive Crestar-owned prospect that fell through the cracks after its drilling budget was chopped.

Hunter’s team spent months trying to find a buyer via horse-and-buggy methods – i.e. the phone.

“I remember thinking there were hundreds of companies right here in town. We couldn’t come close to contacting them all by phone.”

Before the Crestar team finished trying, licences expired and the asset returned to the government. Subsequently reposted, it was picked up by someone else.

“You really hated to see it go away,” he lamented.

Then a lightbulb switched on in Jim Hunter’s brain. A better idea.

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