Falcon Group expands into oil and gas services providing everything from equipment rental to highly-trained security

ERBIL — The Kurdish conglomerate Falcon Group — a holding company for a diversity of units, ranging from construction to agriculture — formed a new company last year focused on servicing the region’s oil and gas businesses, including equipment rental, security, catering, housing and warehouse space.

According to company officials, Falcon Oil & Gas is well positioned to meet the needs of the ever-growing oil and gas industry in Kurdistan. The newly assembled management team draws from over 50 years of technical expertise, and “is committed to creating value and providing support for our customers in the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors,” the company said.

Related to Falcon’s Oil & Gas unit is its Oilfield Service division which offers clients high performance oil and gas rental equipment for drilling, work-over, and production applications, in order to facilitate clients meeting both their operational and commercial targets. “Falcon Oilfield Services offers customers the flexibility to rent and return or keep and buy equipment as their needs change.”

The third spoke of this new wheel of services is Falcon Warehousing — which will offer direct access to both Kurdistan and federal Iraq. The warehousing unit offers companies a unique solution to meet the challenges of oversized equipment, safety, security and supply chain demands.

Speaking to Marcopolis, Falcon Group Chairman Peshraw Majid Agha noted: “We have divisions in security, construction, real estate, agriculture and oil and gas. The oil and gas sector is the one that we are pushing right now. We have a large plot of land for warehousing, we have piping stores and service the big international oil companies.”

Agha notes that the opportunity in providing services to the region’s oil and gas companies is a prime business opportunity, noting: “If you look now, there are more than forty companies trading in the region. Each company may have to drill ten to thirty wells, so there is huge demand for oil and gas services. There are some big oil service companies in Kurdistan but there are few local oil services companies here and we are one of them. I think there are huge opportunities here.”

Imran Khan, director of Falcon Oil & Gas, told Marcopolis: “We are primarily focusing on Kurdistan, but we have plans to expand our operations internationally. We are working on signing some joint ventures with major companies, to bring them here to Kurdistan and to provide them with a variety of services as a partner and also as a contractor.”

Noting that Falcon Group’s new energy-oriented unit just marked its first year in operation in March, the work has been steady and the partnerships are growing, in part based on business relationships already existing.

We already have more than 50 contracts with international oil and gas companies for a diverse range of other services that we offer, for example, security, construction, leasing of office space etc. So we already had that synergy, we just had to expand to offer these clients our oil and gas services also. At the same time we needed capability, so we set up a team and organized our company and we are looking at the different opportunities that exist with our clients from other sectors,” Khan commented on the setting up and growing the new unit.

“We feel like we have this niche in the market with the relationships that we have with these companies. Also we feel like we could provide the same standards and services or even better than those that are provided by other companies. We feel very comfortable that we are a local Kurdish company that is based here and we believe that right now it is time for local companies to acquire technology and team up with partners to be part of the development that Kurdistan is experiencing right now.”

But entering a new business arena — even with an assembled management team experienced in that sector — doesn’t come for free.

“As you can see, there is a lot of investment going on now in Kurdistan and the major investment is in the oil and gas sector. Oil and gas is the future of Kurdistan. We therefore believed that we had to start something in oil and gas,” Khan said.

The Falcon Oil & Gas director added that the initial outlay by Falcon Group over the next five year period may possibly be upward of $100 million at the high end. “For different divisions and different sectors we have different types of investments, but we are looking for about $50 to $100 million dollars of investment over the next five years. That is our target.”

One the earlier mentioned warehousing facilities plans, Khan said the company has three different locations for warehousing that are still in the planning state. He added that the company has more than two-million square meters of land “that we want to prepare for warehousing for international oil and gas companies.”

While conceding that the new Falcon Group company is entering a competitive market, company planners believe that in five years’ time, Falcon Oil & Gas will be near the top position in the energy services market for the Kurdistan region.

“Right now the service sector is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and it is expanding every quarter. We have major international oil companies operating here in Kurdistan including Chevron, Exxon, Total, Gazprom, DNO, Repsol and Marathon (among others). We see a lot of opportunities here,” Khan continued.

“There is more and more investment coming in and we see that it is going to expand and be taken to a different level with investment from these big companies. Five years ago there were just smaller oil companies here, but now we anticipate a boom here over the next two-to-three years.

In the service sector there are hundreds of billions of dollars of investment that has already been made. We want to be part of it.”

What sets Falcon’s Oil & Gas unit apart, according to Khan, is the range of services the company offers, adding that the majority of other companies in the market focus on just one or two services.

“As a whole Group we have Falcon Construction, so we can offer construction, we have Falcon Security so we can provide security services. We can also provide offices and housing, catering services through our catering division, Full Service etc. So within the oil and gas sector, there are actually many other services that we can offer. As I said, what sets us apart is that we have this support from all the other companies within our group,” Khan concluded.