Finding Qualified Oil Suppliers

A collection of Houston’s leading energy companies and contractors is working to bring more minority and women-owned businesses into their supply chains.

The group recently sponsored the fourth annual Petrochemical & Industry Procurement Connections Forum. Debra Stewart, a manager with Shell, co-chaired the event.

“Since we’ve been doing this, it’s opened the door to some companies we weren’t aware of that had strengths in some of our core areas, and they’re now in our supply chain. And there are some that aren’t in our supply chain yet, but the fact that we know that they are out there and can participate when those bids do come up, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with our supplier diversity is to make sure we always have a pipeline of qualified candidates.”

Roughly 150 suppliers participated this year, up from 100 last year. About 100 representatives attended from the ten sponsor firms. Apart from Shell, those included BP, ExxonMobil and Halliburton.