In this episode of the Global Energy Show in Calgary, I am joined by Brian Anderson, the Manager of the COSDS-D, the world's largest oil service directory, to talk about the state of the industry and where things are headed.
00:00:00.000Good afternoon Western Standard Viewers, Nigel Hannaford here again at the Global Energy Show in Calgary at around about three o'clock.
00:00:21.600I have been joined today by somebody who I actually get. He's in publishing, but he's in a very specialized kind of publishing. I want to introduce you to Brian Anderson, and he is the manager for the Comprehensive Oil Service Supply Directory. You say COS-D, I guess.
00:00:42.340Yeah, C-O-S-S-D. That's how most people refer to us.
00:00:45.520So this is like a Yellow Pages for the oil industry.
00:00:48.580It is. Yeah, we've been publishing. Well, we did publish the print directory. We started 42 years ago, and we were the number one energy service directory in North America.
00:00:59.580We have over 16,000 businesses listed on it and over 1,500 headings.
00:01:04.780So, again, if you're looking for oil and gas services in Western Canada, Northern States, and, I mean, Texas, you'll usually find us.
00:01:14.700Brian, tell me that there's still, in this day and age of digital media, that there's still a great big thick yellow paper book that you can actually thumb through.
00:01:25.680Yeah, I would love to say that, but after 42 years, again, it was quite heavy, and the last year we published was last year, and it actually shrank down to a magazine size.
00:01:40.520And, again, essentially what we found is the vast majority of our clients were going online.
00:01:47.140So 14 years ago, we launched C-O-S-S-D.com, which, again, has nearly 20,000 listings on it.
00:01:55.820And, again, we're really relevant for search for most oil and gas services in, again, most oil and gas areas like Western Canada, Northern States, and Texas.
00:02:08.220So you're actually continental-wide, but the vast majority is right here where we are?
00:02:14.560Yeah, I mean, we do have real-time searches, and I see people searching for oil and gas-related services in Nova Scotia, Wyoming, Eastern Seaboard, all over.
00:02:25.780But the majority of our searches are Alberta-based.
00:02:29.120So would you say that your publication is like a barometer of the state of the industry?
00:02:33.860I would. I would. I've been with C-O-S-S-D for nearly a dozen years, and I noticed, I mean, we did have a little bit of a, I guess, an oil recession when oil prices dropped down into the 40s.
00:02:49.920And we did, I mean, a lot of the clients that I dealt with, I mean, it was a tough time.
00:02:54.460So we really couldn't afford to invest a lot of money in advertising, even though they knew it was really important to be an option for someone looking for their services in their market.
00:03:05.300And COVID, again, was a little bit more difficult, again, with going through the COVID experience.
00:03:13.380So based on what you're seeing now, where do you think we're headed?
00:03:16.380Oh, I mean, I've come to the Global Energy Show for, again, eight years, and this year it's been excellent.
00:03:26.560I mean, we're having a lot of new businesses coming up to our booth, and again, with C-O-S-S-D, again, the majority of our listings are free.
00:03:36.280So they're coming up, setting up listings with us, and I mean, most of the people that I talk with, it's very robust, and they're doing quite well.
00:03:45.300It used to be that we kept track of things by just the number of rigs that we're drilling, or the number of permits that have been issued, and the amount of money people were prepared to pay at the auctions for the license to drill.
00:03:59.960With your product, I get the sense that when people expect to be busy, that's when they're coming to see you, and are they expecting to be busy?
00:04:10.700I mean, I talk to my hundreds of clients that I deal with, and I talk to them quite frequently, and again, the vast majority are very busy, happy with the current economic situation.
00:04:24.800But I notice that there's a lot of new businesses opening up that want to be listed.
00:04:28.120On C-O-S-S-D.com, which is our, again, main homepage, there is a button at the very top right-hand corner that says, Add My Business.
00:04:35.660Those are new businesses that currently aren't listed, and again, we've got 18,000 businesses listed there.
00:04:41.120There's a lot of new businesses that are opening up that want to have a presence on our product.
00:04:45.480And it, I mean, during the $40 barrels of oil, I mean, it was very rarely would we get people wanting to be listed on our directory.