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Top Company winner: DCP Midstream
Lisa Ryckman //November 2, 2012//
ENERGY/NATURAL RESOURCES
DCP Midstream
DCP Midstream is determined to get bigger. It is just as determined to get better.
Chairman and CEO Thomas O’Connor knows that those two processes don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. He recognizes the challenge – and welcomes it.
“When you set a goal of being excellent every day, as well as dialing up growth as significantly as we have, it will stress an organization,” he says. “The biggest challenge is building an organization with the experience to figure out how to break the challenges into manageable pieces, and most importantly, believes in the goals we’ve set and the vision of what the company will look like if we’re successful.”
The 83-year-old company, jointly owned by Spectra Energy and Phillips 66, is a leader in the energy industry’s midstream segment. It is the nation’s second-largest natural gas gatherer and processor and the largest natural gas liquids producer, with about 3,100 employees operating 61 plants and more than 62,000 miles of pipeline in 18 states. It’s also one of the largest marketers of natural gas and natural gas byproducts.
“We’re a company that historically had invested $500 to $600 million per year in our system. Now, we’re investing well in excess of $2 billion in 2012, and the outlook for the next few years is similarly robust,” O’Connor says. “It’s a very good opportunity for the company, but it creates enormous challenges for the organization to get this right and deliver on the promises to our owners and customers.”
DCP Midstream (formerly Duke Energy) meets that challenge by hiring the right people with the right experience, commitment and flexibility, O’Connor says.
The company also offers opportunities for employees to give back.
“We try to focus the company support toward associations that highlight employee health,” O’Connor says. “For the last several years, that’s been the American Heart Association. This year, we were the funding leader in the U.S., raising more than $600,000. That’s not bad work for a little midstream company from Denver. But it was our employees who deserve all the credit for getting behind the effort and pulling it off.”
