Should anyone have needed any additional confirmation about the health of the oil and gas industry, all they had to do was drop in on the NAPE Expo held last week at the John Brown convention center in Houston.

This show is designed to bring together smaller oil and gas exploration companies with potential investors. I have to say it was, without any doubt, the most well attended industry event I’ve been to in years. I couldn’t find any parking near the convention center and ended up walking 10 blocks just to get there. Once there, I was overwhelmed by the number of attendees. It was more crowded than a Smith family reunion.

Clearly deals were being done. I noticed many booths that had signs up saying things like “All Twelve Prospects Sold!” and “50% Sold Out!”. Many booths manned by these small companies were already closed down just hours after the show started. It’s obvious that it’s good to be in the oil business these days!

Also in attendance were a number of software vendors servicing the upstream space. Those were the guys that drew me to the show.

One of the problems with energy trading systems is the lack of integration to the upstream systems, particularly those that cover production management, land, and revenue accounting. For producers, these systems are critical in that they manage very complex calculations and record keeping around wellhead balancing, ownership, revenue, and regulatory reporting. They also provide the all important “gas available for sale” information, which is the key information that must be captured in any trading/marketing systems that producers use.

So, I spent some time looking around at the vendors in the space. One in particular that I spent some time with was Bolo Systems. I found these guys particularly interesting in that they have seen tremendous growth over the last couple of years, to the tune of more than 100% per year. Their staff has grown from just 15 a couple of years ago (when they were known by the name Gwiz) to more than 70 today; and according to Helen Leeke, their VP of Market Dev., they would be growing even faster if they could hire the right qualified resources today. In talking with Helen it’s clear that Bolo is a company moving quickly up the ranks in the upstream space. They have in the past and continue to focus on the mid-size to small producers. Even in the face of much larger competitors such as Enertia Software, they’ve won more deals than they’ve lost. I didn’t have time to demo their products, but from what I heard, they’re a company to keep your eye on in the upstream space.

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