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Fueled for change
Local company has ‘compressor of choice’ for gas industry
Boardman
Business has changed dramatically for Dearing Compressor and Pump since test wells were drilled in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.
Based in Boardman Township, Dearing has made a name for itself building compressors for both gas-production facilities and transmission systems. The company’s product is the “compressor of choice” for the gas industry, said Chris Jaskiewicz, senior vice president and COO of VEC Inc., a Girard company that supplies prefabrication materials for the oil and gas industry.
During the production process, natural gas flows naturally at the beginning of the process. Once that is completed, a compressor such as those Dearing makes will pull the rest of the gas from the well, said Rick Dearing, president of Dearing.
“It works like a straw sucking water from a glass,” he said.
Dearing’s compressors help move natural gas in the transmission and production process. The company also builds air compressors that are used in manufacturing.
The bulk of the company’s work in the last six years has been for gas companies, Dearing said.
“Of the 100 people who have come in here since 2008, all of them have been for gas compressors,” he said.
Since 2008, Dearing Compressor and Pump has been doubling its volume each year, said Becky Wall, executive vice president of the company.
“We’re currently looking to increase our efficiency; to make projects that currently take six weeks down to three or four weeks,” she said.
There still is the oppor- tunity for additional expansion, Dearing said.
The company has about an eight-month lag between when it receives and order and when that order is delivered, he said.
Dearing is seeking to reduce that time. The key toward being able to speed orders is to do more prefabrication before materials make it to the assembly building, Wall said.
For that to happen, the company would need to find more companies and workers to assist in the prefabrication process. Those companies are getting harder to find because of their increased workload, Dearing said. The company understood that a gas boom was coming early in the process.
“We knew it was going to be big well before the general public, because it was our customers digging the test wells,” Wall said.
Since then Dearing has had to learn how to do business with the larger companies, Wall said.
“Working with Consol has made us a better company,” she said. “We’ve reached a new level to do business with them.”
Despite its expansion, the company remains mostly regional in shipping its compressors, but it has begun to send some to Oklahoma and Western Texas, Dearing said. Increased business has Dearing looking to add more space to its facilities. It was just two years ago when the company built a more-than 100,000-square-foot production building.
The company has plans to add to the fabrication and assembly buildings on its current site, he said.
Another potential area of growth within the gas industry for Dearing is in the construction of natural-gas fueling stations, Dearing said.
“That’s just starting and it’s going to be big,” he said. “The key is the technology has to be available to Joe Public.”
Natural-gas vehicles will be much cheaper than traditional gasoline and diesel. There just needs to be a company that installs the pumps and then opens the site to the public to get started, Dearing said.
The fueling-station technology supports Dearing’s existing compressors, Wall said. The units are much smaller than the gas units that take three tractor- trailers to deliver.
Gas companies are not the only industry ordering more compressors from Dearing; manufacturing companies are also experiencing growth, Dearing said.
Dearing traditionally focused on expanding its product line to serve the needs of businesses within this region, Wall said.
It minimizes the risk the company takes being involved with any one industry, she said.
“This company has been through a number of severe economic downturns,” Wall said.