Warming a home on a cold morning can feel effortless, but it involves an intricate system most people never see. Long before natural gas reaches a home or the electrical plant that energizes that home, it travels through infrastructure that connects natural gas producers, pipeline operators, equipment manufacturers, and utilities. Across that chain, safety and reliability depend on materials, equipment, processes, and people working from common frameworks.

That same premise extends across the entire oil and natural gas industry. When companies, equipment and service suppliers, technical experts, and regulators all work with the same set of objectives using a common framework, projects move forward efficiently. And when they don’t, projects are delayed, work is duplicated, and risks escalate.

This is the essential role technical standards play. They are the shared reference points that bring consistency to a vast and diverse industry.

Since its founding more than a century ago, the American Petroleum Institute (API) has helped provide those necessary reference points. Its portfolio of more than 800 standards covers every segment of the oil and natural gas industry, underpinning the safety, quality, efficiency, and interoperability of equipment and operations that depend on consistency, even as the industry and world around them changes.

The foundational standard
In the oil and natural gas industry, the need for that kind of consistency became especially clear during World War I, when mismatched pipe sizes, threads, and couplings caused delays and equipment shortages, revealing the consequences of inconsistent technical requirements.

Pipe manufacturing offered a practical place to begin. In 1924, API published its first standard, Specifications for Steel and Iron Pipe for Oil Country Tubular Goods. More than a hundred years later, that same standard—since renamed API Specification 5L (API Spec 5L), Line Pipe, now in its 47^th edition (as of June 2026)—still provides a consistent technical baseline for the manufacturing of steel pipe used across the industry.

But API Spec 5L’s century of relevance was never inevitable. Without careful maintenance, a technical standard can become fixed in the assumptions of the era that produced it. API Spec 5L has endured because it has been revisited and strengthened as knowledge deepened, technologies advanced, and the demands on infrastructure grew. Across its 47 editions, the standard has kept pace with developments in pipe manufacturing, the shifting realities of pipeline operations, and the rising expectations placed on energy systems. Its latest edition, published in June 2026, adds important new requirements across more than 15 topics, including pipe used to transport carbon dioxide, an application its original authors could never have imagined.

That is what standards do at their best. They give the industry a disciplined, trusted way to carry accumulated experience into the challenges ahead. API Spec 5L has remained foundational for a century precisely because it was built to evolve.

The standards development process
The strength of an API standard lies not only in its technical content, but in the collaborative, consensus-based process behind its development. API is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which verifies that its development process is transparent, provides an opportunity for a balance of interested stakeholders to participate, and ensures that due process is followed.

A standard begins with a real need, such as a new technology, a regulatory demand, an operating challenge, or an emerging area existing documents do not yet address. From there, a committee of volunteer experts drafts the document through a process built on technical rigor, public review and comment, and the careful resolution of different viewpoints and objections. Depending on the complexity of the subject, that work can take months or even years. For the 47^th edition of API 5L, subject matter experts from more than a dozen countries shaped the revision, lending it both technical depth and international relevance.

While not the same as unanimity, consensus demands broad support across stakeholder categories, giving the finished standard legitimacy beyond any one participant, company, or jurisdiction. Once published, standards are reviewed and updated on a regular cycle, so they remain accurate, useful, and responsive to changing needs.

A common language for a global industry
As projects, supply chains, and regulatory systems increasingly span multiple countries, consistent technical expectations become essential. A length of line pipe may be manufactured in one country, inspected in another, and installed in a third. And operators, contractors, and regulators may each play a different part in the same project. The requirements they rely on all need to mean the same thing. Otherwise, discrepancies can delay projects, increase costs, impede trade, and introduce avoidable risk.

API standards help provide consistency on a global scale. API’s latest international usage report identified 1,395 references to API standards across 40 international markets (in laws, regulations, technical guidance, national standards, and operational manuals), a 20 percent increase since the previous report in 2022. Those markets span Europe, the Americas, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

That breadth of adoption gives a fragmented global industry a single, widely recognized reference point. A manufacturer in any market can build to an API standard, and a regulator can reference existing API standards that are already being used. For operators purchasing equipment across borders, it means confidence that what they buy meets a trustworthy benchmark. And countries building or modernizing their energy infrastructure gain too, drawing on practices the global industry has already tested and refined.

In a period shaped by geopolitical uncertainty, supply chain pressure, and rising energy demand, that kind of consistency helps reinforce supply chains, improve efficiency, and manage costs, all in support of energy security.

Putting standards to work
While API standards give the industry a common foundation for safe and consistent operations, API’s Global Industry Services (GIS) division helps translate that foundation into practice through certification, training, licensing, and safety programs.

API’s certification and licensing programs help companies demonstrate that standards are being applied consistently. The API Monogram Program licenses manufacturers to apply the Monogram mark to equipment produced in conformance with applicable API standards and specifications, giving operators greater confidence in the products they purchase. The API Repair and Remanufacture Program and API Quality Registrar (APIQR) extends that same standards-based approach to repaired equipment and to companies’ quality management systems.

GIS programs also directly advance safety. The Center for Offshore Safety promotes the highest levels of safety for the U.S. offshore sector, the Process Safety Site Assessment Program sends independent experts on site to gauge the health of process safety systems in refining and petrochemicals, and the Pipeline Safety Management System Program helps operators of every size measure and improve their safety performance.

And because standards depend on the people who apply them, API Training gives professionals opportunities to build standards-based expertise through instructor-led courses, self-paced learning, customized group training, and API-approved global providers. The API Individual Certification Programs (ICP) complement that training by offering an independent way to evaluate the knowledge and experience of technical and inspection personnel. Since 1989, ICP has issued credentials that strengthen industry safety and consistency.

While these programs differ in focus, each rests on the same premise: a standard delivers its full value only when it is applied consistently.

Ready for what comes next
Throughout its history, the oil and natural gas industry has been defined by change: new technologies, shifting supply chains, and evolving operating environments. And along with each transition, expectations around safety, environmental performance, and reliability have only grown. What has remained constant is the need for common ground.

For more than a century, API standards have provided that common ground. From the first standard written to resolve the problem of mismatched pipe to a 47^th edition addressing the transport of carbon dioxide, the story of API Spec 5L is the story of standards themselves: enduring because they are built to evolve.

And wherever and however the industry moves next, API standards will continue to advance with it, providing the technical guidance needed to meet change with shared knowledge, disciplined processes, and aligned expectations.

Anchal Liddar is Senior Vice President of API’s Global Industry Services (GIS) division, where she leads global operations delivering standards, certification, training, publications, and safety programs that support safe and efficient industry performance worldwide. Prior to API, she spent nine years at The Boeing Company, holding leadership roles across supply chain, finance, and program management. She earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Irvine, and an MBA and Master of Science in Information Systems & Technology from Claremont Graduate University.

The post The Standards That Keep Energy Flowing<p class="company">American Petroleum Institute (API)</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

A leader in the North American geoexchange market, Geosource Energy is a relatively small second-generation Canadian operation that is having a significant market impact by providing Earth Powered Solutions™ to clients across North America and beyond.

Using geothermal energy, which is generated and stored beneath the Earth’s surface, the company’s geoexchange systems provide cost-effective and highly efficient heating, cooling, and hot water for new construction and retrofit projects that seek to set the bar for sustainability and performance.

Backed by proprietary technology and a unique approach, over its 20-plus year history Geosource Energy has drilled over six million linear feet for more than 400 successful projects across Canada and the United States, establishing itself as a leader in the field and a true champion of geothermal.

Why choose geothermal?
An investment in geothermal is an investment in reduced energy use, and thus, lower demand on the grid, fewer emissions, lower life cycle costs, more predictable monthly rates, and optimal year-round comfort; it’s a win for both people and the environment, which is why a greater number of utilities and government entities are doubling down on these investments.

Geothermal systems are proven more sustainable versus conventional HVAC systems, while also being more cost-effective over the long term. In fact, users can experience 25 to 50 percent lower energy costs as a result of the investment, while the underground infrastructure can outlast the structure itself. As CEO Stan Reitsma notes, studies have shown that, “For every dollar that’s saved there, there’s nine dollars saved on the grid.”

In a market marred by volatility and unpredictability, particularly where energy is concerned, the untapped potential of geothermal to add capacity to the grid is something worth exploring. Studies are underway to better understand how geoexchange systems can be used to support the grid as it faces unprecedented demand, particularly in the wake of mass data centre expansion.

Naturally, a big driver in the U.S. is from utilities as they seek to meet this growing demand—more specifically, they are investigating the role of geothermal in cooling storage and demand side power management for data centres as they continue to come online at an impressive pace. “If they can start proving out geothermal for data centres, that’s going to create a whole different type of expansion in the market,” says Vice President Kate Cheng, an area that Geosource Energy is prepared to undertake.

Why choose Geosource?
With more than 20 years of experience offering utility grade construction services and best-in-class drilling and expertise, Geosource Energy is not only a leader in geothermal but also a technology leader who sets the bar and continues to drive the industry forward.

“One of the big differentiators we have is our drill rigs. Geosource has worked with Novamac, our drill manufacturer, for many, many years now and we have only one type of drill rig that we use across our entire company,” says Cheng of the highly flexible dual rotary drill rig which enables work to be done in even the most challenging conditions.

Since 2008, Geosource Energy has been positioning the bore field below a building’s footprint, a proprietary process referred to as At Grade, which allows the drilling to take place before excavation starts (though it can come at any point during new construction or retrofits thanks to angle drilling). Angle drilling enables Geosource Energy to go beneath infrastructure like roadways, buildings, or greenspace without disturbance, using a central location and a concentrated workspace to minimize the impact of its operations.

“When you’re in urban environments drilling next to multifamily buildings with balconies five feet from where you’re drilling, we really limit the acoustic impact of our drill rigs and we’ve developed specialized equipment that allows us to containerize all of our operations so we’re not a big messy site with spoils and grout flying around in the air,” Cheng explains.

This enables the team to get maximum capacity from a limited area, which is particularly useful for retrofit projects like 240 Markland in the Greater Toronto Area, where geoexchange not only improved overall energy efficiency, but also reduced the property’s energy reliance.

“We try to limit the amount of space that we’re actually using to do the geo by putting them very close together at surface and then spreading it out underground,” explains Reitsma, who notes space requirements can be reduced by upwards of 95 percent. “If we had not angle drilled, they would not have been able to retrofit those buildings. They didn’t have enough space.”

This patent-protected process optimizes the trade sequence and drives value from a project’s outset, and to ensure that the benefits of its use are not limited by Geosource’s own capacity, which has been tested by growing demand, the company will license out the technology to other drillers to ensure that industry best practices are being implemented.

This drive to advance geothermal is part of the company’s DNA. According to Cheng, “Our core innovation tenets being equipment innovation, process innovation, and data-driven operations means design improvements based on real performance data, new tools for geothermal field analysis, and intelligence for operational systems,” which enables the company to undertake industry-leading projects that move the needle forward for geothermal and sustainable construction.

Setting the bar
Geosource Energy has a rich portfolio of projects highlighting the value it brings to the market. At the University of Toronto’s St. George campus, Geosource Energy drilled 372 boreholes at 250 meters per borehole (approximately half the height of the CN Tower) to complete the largest operational urban geothermal/geoexchange system in Canada. The project boasts an energy capacity with a storage equivalent of 250,000 electric vehicle batteries and it has cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 17,000 tonnes annually.

The demonstrated value for institutional operations is incredible, which is why more and more such clients are integrating geoexchange into their projects. There is a desire to reap the long-term benefits, deemed worthy of their upfront costs.

This was also the case recently at the new Western Memorial Regional Hospital in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador where Geosource designed and installed the geothermal system, which included 375 boreholes spanning 600 feet below the parking lot. Recognized as North America’s largest hospital geothermal system, the geoexchange system provides 100 percent of the hospital’s heating, replacing electric baseboards with a more efficient system that has resulted in a 50 percent reduction in electricity use.

These are the kinds of results Geosource has delivered in Canada over its 20-plus year history, and now it continues to make history south of the border as well. Selected by Lendlease for the 1 Java Street project, a residential development in Brooklyn comprising 834 rental units—30 percent of which are designated as affordable housing—as well as nearly 13,000 square feet of neighbourhood-oriented retail space, Geosource’s expertise and ability to execute is in high demand, and for good reason.

Upon completion, 1 Java Street became the largest geothermal residential project in the United States, thanks to Geosource Energy’s vertical closed loop geoexchange system comprising 321 boreholes at a depth of 500 feet. This system will reduce annual carbon emissions from heating and cooling by 53 percent compared with typical residential systems and as an all-electric building, emissions will be eliminated.

This project also set the stage for additional work in the U.S. and as such, Geosource made the decision to establish a U.S. headquarters in Manhattan to support growth in demand.

For instance, Geosource recently partnered with Honeywell on the John F. Kennedy Elementary School project in Boston, the city’s first geothermal retrofit of a school in the area. Certainly, the geology of the area presents unique challenges, but Geosource was up to the task.

Cheng credits the rigs as “a big part of what makes us so flexible in different geologies because no matter what the geology is, we can tool up to do rotary drilling.”

It’s a good thing, too, because interest is being generated out west with other major projects like Oracle Global Headquarters in Nashville, which means neither geology nor geography is going to stop the company’s success.

The growing push for decarbonization
For clients, geothermal can serve as a component part of achieving net zero/low-carbon outcomes and Geosource Energy, with its acute awareness that only a percentage of the market has been spoken for, continues to push on.

“We all work together trying to decarbonize the industry and we have a solutions mindset related to that,” explains Cheng, which is why Geosource continues to experience growth in demand for its expertise around North America, and even the world.

According to Cheng, “We have the practicality and work ethic of a field-driven construction company but with the analytical approach of an engineering and technology organization.” This is backed by an unmatched depth of experience in the field, actionable data, and technology leadership that enables the company to find success no matter where projects may take it.

With interest even being generated overseas, where there is growing recognition of the potential impact of geoexchange, Geosource Energy is a Canadian company who has become a global authority in geothermal. This is a team that continues to advance the market through exceptional projects and unmatched performance, raising the bar for an entire industry in the process.

The post Raising the Standard for Geothermal<p class="company">Geosource Energy</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Based in northeast Edmonton, Alberta, QPP is a 100 percent Canadian-owned manufacturer of polyurethane pipeline pigs and pigging accessories. Its product range spans sizes from compact-diameter water and chemical lines right up to the large-diameter transmission pipelines that cross North America. The company serves customers in oil and gas, mining, water and wastewater, and industrial process sectors. And since 2016, it has operated as a subsidiary of Suncast Polytech Inc., a strategic acquisition that changed the scope of what QPP is capable of, and what it aspires to be.

What’s in a name?
The name raises eyebrows in boardrooms and on job sites alike. Tim Canete, President of Quality Polly Pig Ltd., is used to the question. “A pipeline pig is essentially a device that travels inside a pipeline, pushed along by the flowing product or by water or air, to do a job,” he says. “The main function is cleaning the inside of the pipe during new construction, for ongoing maintenance, and for prepping lines ahead of inspection.”

Beyond cleaning, pigs serve two other primary roles. Batching pigs separate different products travelling through the same pipeline so a transmission operator can move bitumen down the line one day and switch to a different fluid the next, with a pig acting as a physical buffer between the two. Foam swabs, meanwhile, are used to dewater newly constructed lines before they enter service.

QPP manufactures its pigs exclusively in polyurethane (PUR), in both solid-cast and medium-density foam configurations. The choice of material is deliberate—polyurethane is a family of materials whose properties can be tuned by adjusting prepolymers, curatives, and processing conditions.

QPP engineers select and blend formulations to suit specific duties including harder compositions for aggressive mechanical scraping, softer ones for sealing inside slightly out-of-round pipe, more chemically resistant grades for refined product lines, and highly abrasion-resistant versions for slurry applications in mining.

“Polyurethane provides the combination of properties that pigging demands,” Canete says. “It needs to be soft and flexible enough to conform to the pipe yet tough and durable enough to clean the pipe.”

Partners in success
QPP began operations in 1996. For its first two decades it operated as a focused pig manufacturer, building a reputation for quality across the Canadian oil and gas sector. The transformative moment came in 2016, when Suncast Polytech Inc., an Edmonton-based manufacturer of large-scale polyurethane wear parts for mining, oil sands, industrial, construction, and forestry applications, acquired QPP and brought it under its roof.

Suncast itself had been founded in 1998, driven by a technology it developed in-house, ReCast™. The premise of ReCast is straightforward in concept and technically demanding in execution. New polyurethane is bonded directly to worn, cured polyurethane, rebuilding the original part to its design specifications. The result is a restored component that performs like new. Suncast spent years perfecting this process in some of the harshest industrial environments on the planet, including the oil sands operations of northern Alberta.

“Suncast has been doing ReCast since around 2000,” Canete says. “Initially it was focused on pipeline pig components for Suncor, then it expanded into larger wear parts. The 2016 acquisition of QPP was really about spreading that technology into the broader pigging world.”

Today, QPP and Suncast share a single 22,000-square-foot facility on 3.3 acres in northeast Edmonton. Under one roof sit five automated pour machines, multiple curing ovens, lathes, a coordinate measuring machine (CMM), and a large-format 3D printer added in recent years for rapid prototyping. The combined team numbers around 15 people, small by industrial standards, but deep in expertise.

What the acquisition gave QPP was access to Suncast’s accumulated materials science. Where QPP once operated with a handful of polyurethane formulations, the combined operation now works with approximately 30 distinct recipes, each developed through years of real-world application.

“We’ve gone from a three-recipe company to 30-plus recipes,” Canete says. “All of that knowledge in materials, processing, and parts design, goes into every QPP product.”

The role of ReCast™
In most industrial contexts, a worn polyurethane part follows a familiar path: removal, disposal, replacement. A pig cup that begins its working life with a sharp, precisely dimensioned sealing edge gradually rounds with use. Traditionally, the logical endpoint is the landfill.

ReCast interrupts that cycle. The worn component becomes a core onto which new PUR is cast, creating a permanent bond between the new and cured material. The rebuilt part is restored to full specification dimensions and, based on more than two decades of oil sands service history, performs equivalently to a new component.

The numbers behind the program are significant. Suncast has processed more than 3.5 million pounds of polyurethane since 2000, with nearly half of that volume accounted for by ReCast rebuilds. The program has, by the company’s calculation, kept over one million pounds of polyurethane out of landfill, and ReCast parts cost approximately 30 percent less than new equivalents.

Until recently, however, ReCast remained largely unknown outside of the oil sands sector. “We have a proven rebuilding technology with decades of empirical evidence behind it in one of the toughest industrial environments in the world,” Canete says. “Sustainability is moving from a talking point to an actual procurement criterion in a lot of sectors. ReCast is well positioned for that shift, and we want to get the message out.”

The timing appears right. Canete observes that pipeline operators are increasingly incorporating lifecycle emissions, recycled content, and end-of-life material handling into supplier evaluations. What was once a value-add is becoming a differentiator that procurement teams actively seek.

Home-grown expertise
One of the less visible dimensions of what QPP and Suncast have built is the depth of manufacturing knowledge held within their team and the degree to which that knowledge had to be developed from scratch.

Polyurethane manufacturing for industrial wear applications is a niche with no formal training pathway. There are no degrees in pipeline pig formulation, no certification programs for oil sands-grade PUR wear parts. Everything QPP and Suncast know about the craft—every formulation, every processing technique—has been developed internally over nearly three decades. “There aren’t schools you can pull from. It’s all on-the-job development, and some of our people have been processing urethane parts for more than 20 years,” Canete says.

That institutional depth has a practical consequence and QPP now operates as a recognized engineering house, not merely a manufacturer. Its team uses advanced 3D modelling software for part and mould design and can either develop custom engineered solutions independently or collaborate directly with customer engineering teams. The large-format 3D printer added in recent years compresses the prototyping cycle significantly; where custom pig development once took months of design iteration, the team can now have prototypes in hand within a day in some cases.

The quality assurance program reflects the same discipline. QPP maintains strict vetting criteria for material suppliers, recognizing that formulation consistency starts at the raw ingredient level. Every finished part is inspected against customer specification before it leaves the facility.

The 3.3-acre Edmonton site sits on the CANAMEX trade corridor, with direct rail access via CN’s intermodal yard to the Port of Vancouver and the Port of Prince Rupert, connecting QPP and Suncast to Asia-Pacific markets. The corridor runs south to the U.S. border, giving the operation efficient access to its largest export market.

Canete frames the location in terms of what it makes possible with raw materials arriving from global suppliers and finished and rebuilt PUR parts moving out to customers across Canada, the United States, and international markets. The facility, which QPP and Suncast moved into in 2023, expanded the combined manufacturing footprint and production capacity at a time of growing demand.

The proximity to the oil sands region of northern Alberta, particularly the Municipality of Wood Buffalo, is equally deliberate. Suncast has supplied Suncor and other oil sands producers as an OEM polyurethane supplier for over two decades, and QPP, for its part, manufactures approximately 12,000 pipeline pigs and components annually, most of which are deployed within Alberta’s pipeline network.

For Canadian operators, the 100 percent Canadian ownership of QPP and Suncast carries supply chain implications that have become more salient in recent years. For U.S. and international customers, it represents a stable, allied-jurisdiction supplier with no cross-border complexity.

An industry in transition
The pipeline industry is in the middle of a period of convergence as aging municipal infrastructure is reaching design-life limits, smart pig technology is generating new demand for clean lines ahead of inline inspection, and emerging applications including hydrogen pipelines and CO₂ transport for carbon capture are creating requirements that no established pig formulation was designed to meet. Canete sees all of these as QPP and Suncast territory. “Companies that own their materials capability will be able to respond quickly. That’s exactly where we sit,” he says.

On the product side, QPP manufactures a complete range of solid-cast pigs including Utradisc, Powerdisc, Ball pig, Bell-cup, Dyna-flex, Multi-cup, and Pig-valve configurations; foam pigs including balls, squeegees, and swabs; component pigs for batching, bidirectional, construction, and brush-cleaning applications; and a full accessories program covering brushes, magnets, pigging poles, and transmitters. The intent is that a pipeline operator can source a complete pigging package from a single supplier.

Longer-term priorities include broadening the ReCast program to cover a wider range of pig components, expanding into water and wastewater applications where aging municipal infrastructure is generating increasing maintenance activity, and continuing to invest in the Edmonton facility as both product demand and technology capabilities evolve.

When Canete is asked what he most wants readers to take away from QPP’s story, he steers away from the product and toward the foundation underneath it. “When you buy a QPP pig, you are tapping into 30 years of urethane materials science, an Edmonton-based engineering team that solves real-world wear problems, and a sustainability story, through ReCast, that costs less and wastes less than the alternative. We are not trying to be the biggest pig company in the world. We are the company you call when the challenge is difficult.”

It is a precise articulation of a deliberately focused position. QPP and Suncast occupy a narrow slice of the industrial world—Canadian-owned, built on materials expertise accumulated over three decades without a textbook in sight. The pipeline operators, mining companies, and municipal water authorities that rely on QPP’s products are betting, ultimately, on the depth of knowledge behind each pig that leaves that 22,000-square-foot facility. By most measures, it is a solid bet.

The post Pigs, Polyurethane, and Purpose<p class="company">Quality Polly Pig Ltd.</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

In his book, Hightower discusses the countless lessons he learned from his parents while working for their janitorial company—navigating racial barriers, financial hurdles, and underscoring the importance of keeping your word to employees, industry partners, and customers. “There are a lot of people who want to be in business but don’t really know how, and don’t think that it’s possible,” he shares. “Having been in business my entire life, I just thought that, at my age, I need to leave something behind.”

Prior to building his petroleum business from scratch, Hightower worked at his mother and father’s business, Hightower’s Janitorial Service, in the Middletown, Ohio area. Before he even entered his teens, Steve Hightower showed up at work early on as a child with his Mother and Father, cleaning offices and commercial and residential properties. By the time he was 16, he was a crew leader with adults working under him. Ambitious and with an eye on the future, the young entrepreneur grew the family janitorial business from Middletown to Dayton, Cincinnati, and then statewide. “I was that generation who took a baseline family business and developed it into something more,” he says.

From fundamentals to finance
Watching his parents closely—and accustomed to hard work as a youngster—Hightower was a fast learner. Even today, he believes you need to create a solid foundation to be successful, no matter the enterprise. “Business is basic; you have to understand finance, pay your bills, and know how to invoice,” he states. “And whatever product or service you are offering, that has to be delivered, and delivered on time. Get a product that a company has to have to execute, versus a product that people may want to have—product that is moving every day even while you sleep.” He cites the supply chains of paint (“without resin, there is no paint”), gasoline (“without crude oil, refineries would shut down”), and consumer goods (“you can’t ship or sell without packaging) as examples. Critically, Hightower says, “Trust is built, not assumed! People have to know that they can trust you, and it always helps if they like you.”

Taking on more responsibility managing others, Hightower grew the janitorial business and connected with big players. This included selling industrial materials to the Ford Motor Company in Sharonville. He took advantage of a statewide program, HB: 584, which afforded companies owned by persons of African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian descent the ability to bid on certain contracts in Ohio. Other opportunities presented themselves, and Hightower pursued more procurement contracts. This included a huge opportunity when Landmark Supply Co LTD, wholly owned by Steve, bid a fuel contract which energy giant BP had held for 32 years.

Hightower knew how to find a supplier. “If you have an opportunity big enough, you can find a supplier for it, as long as he knows he can be paid,” he says. His first fuel contract was for the entire State of Ohio in 1982, and to this day, Hightower credits the late Don Lykins of Lykins Oil, who quoted him as his supplier, providing product and a credit instrument that secured the sale to the state of Ohio.

The contract revealed Hightower’s confidence. “I did not know anything about petroleum. I did not come from the industry, I did not work for a petroleum company,” he says. “And at that particular time, he remembers saying to his people—even though it was only two or three people at the time—‘Whatever our part, we need to do that well.’ “Thus the beginning of learning the business.

Thanks to Lykins, Hightower learned about a credit instrument that allowed the company to gain credit by utilizing a “lockbox.” This, he says, was the key to his ability to grow in the business, because he could secure funding to his suppliers by having customers send checks to the bank’s lockbox; once the check arrived, the bank was instructed to send the money to the supplier, i.e. Lykins, initially under the name of Landmark supply Co LTD.

“The bank had no liability, because they only had instructions to transfer the dollars to my supplier,” he says. “I could not get a bank loan for petroleum. None of the local banks would trust me to be in the oil business. To them I was just a janitor… I was told by a diversity professional of a construction company in Cincinnati to stay in my lane. How I was able to get to doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in business was through the use of the lockbox.”

Hightowers Petroleum continued to grow, and the business reached $235 million after many years, before HPC got its first commercial bank loan. “No one believed that I should be in the petroleum business, but you learn how to manage with what you have. You’ve got to be creative, and you’ve got to deliver, and most importantly you have to have the courage to succeed. We were able to deliver, and that’s how I really got started.”

The evolution of energy
Following the initial contract years later with the State of Ohio, the company was called to Cleveland and won an opportunity to haul jet fuel to Government locations BP was fulfilling. “They selected us to become a ‘Contract Carrier’ for BP after they supported and help secured our PUCO (Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) status, which allowed the company to transport jet fuel to various government entities within the state for BP.” It was at that point that Steve incorporated “Hightowers Petroleum Company” in 1984 and had the credentials to officially be in the fuel industry.

Today, Hightowers Petroleum remains a leader in energy solutions. A safe, environmentally responsible wholesale fuel supplier, the company’s reputation is unparalleled, with a 99.9 percent on-time delivery rate. The company’s Focused Energy Model is unique and “designed to minimize energy spend, maximize energy efficiencies, and optimize your company’s success by having a trusted single source manage all of your energy requirements.”

Establishing its reputation as a trusted supplier of traditional fuels in the downstream such as gasoline and diesel fuels, today the company is moving upstream to include crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and supplemental products such as diesel exhaust fuel (DEF), additives, and lubricants. Hightowers Petroleum keeps investing in the future of energy. Our “HPC Mastercard® Fleet Card” is nationwide serving every state in the USA with discounts at the pump for our commercial customers, both fleet and Class A vehicles,” says Hightower. “Additionally, we follow our customers and provide alternative fuels which include renewable diesel and hydrogen for fleets produced on site; emerging technologies such as nano nuclear reactors; small-scale reactors; carbon credits; and electric vehicle (EV) charging station infrastructure,” he says.

“EV is a Johnny-come-lately,” says Hightower. It is a piece of the company’s automotive business, which includes General Motors, Volvo, Nissan, and Mack Trucks. “When your automotive customers are moving toward EV and electric, you don’t want to be the last horse and buggy on the street, so you get ahead of the game. That’s why we went toward EV.”

The company’s construction arm, Hightower EV Solutions, is growing in response. Currently, there are 15 or 16 major turnkey EV installations going on across the country, from California to New York to Miami. This work comprises installing EV charging stations, infrastructure, charging stations, and electrical upgrades. “That’s where we’ve done very well with Hightower EV Solutions, and it is growing quite rapidly,” says Hightower. The company also owns the software for many EV stations and provides 24/7 maintenance service to customers.

Navigating change
Even with the current global uncertainty surrounding petroleum because of the closures at the Strait of Hormuz, business remains solid. “The good thing about this industry is whether its crude oil, gasoline, or diesel, they need to have it,” says Hightower. “Price might be a factor, but you’ve got to pay it anyway, because you need it for your refineries. Refineries can’t shut down.” The price of freight has gone up from $2 to $12, and the product has increased from $45 to $50 dollars a barrel to $100 to $110. “Instability has its challenges, however it also has its opportunities. It’s time to lean in, not put your head down, but to ‘step up.’” Hightower is moving full force in the upstream opportunities created that were not available prior to this disruption.

While this has caused plenty of conflict and confusion in the petroleum industry, it has also created opportunities. “We look at it from an opportunity standpoint, and basically just lean into the situation and continue the route we were on, namely maintaining and managing our downstream customers on a daily basis.” With a presence in every state in the continental U.S., Hightowers Petroleum is also entering Puerto Rico and Hawaii. To achieve this in the downstream, Hightower and his team are buying product throughout the United States and managing the supply chain of carriers that carry product to almost every major city in the U.S.

“We’ve been able to do that one customer at a time,” he says. “We have hundreds of customers now, 99 percent private sector.” His philosophy is, “If you take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you. When times get hard, companies are still looking for people who will answer the phone, show up, and do what they say they’re going to do! And that’s been our success model.”

For years, Hightowers Petroleum has maintained a philosophy of going deep, not wide. The company started with fuels like gasoline and diesel long before adding EVs. Other factors behind the company’s success include MasterCard fleet cards and offering discounts to private companies with large fleets throughout the U.S. using Hightowers products and services.

Building the business on wholesale downstream fuels, Hightower says upstream, like crude oil and LNG, is totally different. A load of gasoline or diesel fuel of about 9,000 gallons going down the road is approximately $30,000 to $35,000; a load of crude oil, about one million barrels per shipment, amounts to some $85 to $100 million per shipment. “$30,000 versus $100 million? That’s a big leap for a little guy,” says Hightower, who brought in experts specializing in trading crude and upstream over the past three years. Owing to this, the company now has customers in Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and Africa.

“That’s because I continue to work in our vertical, but in a different portion within the vertical of petroleum products, and that’s where we stand today,” Hightower explains. “We are taking advantage of opportunities being posed by all of the confusion that’s going on, because we’ve got relationships with China. With our Chinese partners, we can go through the Strait of Hormuz.” And with Europe being short on crude oil, customers are looking for safe places to purchase product, and the U.S. is considered one of those safer places, as opposed to Mexico, Central and South America, or certain countries in Africa. Customers are extremely comfortable purchasing petroleum from Hightowers Petroleum.

“When you have a disruption, that, again, is opportunity. Fortunately, we worked for three years building a foundation upstream, and the environment became what it is. There is a shortage and a need, and Hightowers was well-positioned after 44 years in the petroleum industry, and able to get partners from Europe and the UAE and here in the USA. One criterion for exporting fuel or crude from the U.S. is, there needs to be a base in the U.S. Hightowers Petroleum has become that partnering business in the U.S. for about four different major corporations and has been able to execute in the market despite shortages. “The advantages we put in place allowed us to be prepared, so this was not a disaster for us. It was an opportunity, and an opportunity to succeed.”

Continuing on its path, Hightowers Petroleum recently formed a partnership with multinational giant Shell with its MasterCard fleet card. Offering some of the deepest discounts in the country, Shell took notice and partnered with Hightowers. When the fleet card was released in 1985, it was a loss leader; today, it is a very profitable part of the business.

A foundation for the future
Years after founding the business, Steve Hightower says much of his success comes down to drive, respect for customers and employees, and treating people right. “This is an industry of reputation,” he says. “It takes a lifetime to build a reputation, and it takes 15 seconds to lose it. The difference is, I grew this company from scratch without basically any money, no outside investors, and no big loans available to me. Today, I am still a 100 percent owner of a C-Corp—typically, most companies today have either sold off, sold to someone else, and are not around. Longevity comes from being honest with people.”

Hightowers Petroleum’s reputation is the result of hard work, dedication, professionalism, and on-time delivery. These attributes, and others, have seen the company recognized for its work. A couple of the most recent was the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Southwest Ohio and the “Sustainability Award” from Honda NA. competing against all of their vendors in 2026. Although this is a validation, Hightower says the company’s work in the community is just as important. Along with being active on many boards, the company also adopts classrooms and sixth graders with a program that exposes schoolchildren to the petroleum industry within classroom education and small exercises, along with field trips to learn about the oil and gas industry.

For years, Steve Hightower has championed public speaking and still carries his love of high school debate to this day. This includes taking local kids from Middletown to the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio for Youth and Government mock legislation. These are the real reasons he wrote FUELING. “They compete against other schools from across the country,” he says. “When people ask, ‘Why did you write a book?’ it’s because those kids are our next generation. I have to leave my knowledge for somebody, because none of us are going to be here forever.’” In Hightowers Petroleum, he is building a legacy to last.

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