Selling to Energy, Utilities, Oil & Gas
US energy/utilities/O&G MRO spend ~$45-65B/year. Refining alone consumes $8-12B in MRO annually. Power generation ~$10-15B. Upstream O&G highly cyclical with rig count, $5-15B range. Midstream ~$3-5B. Renewables ~$2-4B and growing fastest. Water/wastewater ~$4-6B. Electric T&D ~$8-12B.
90-180 days for consumables on existing AVL; 12-36 months for new product/vendor introduction (must align to outage/turnaround window); 6-18 months for corporate-AVL onboarding.
$10K-$100K initial trial; $250K-$5M+ annual recurring per major plant once on AVL; $1M-$25M+ for T/A material packages at refineries.
Sub-segments inside Energy, Utilities, Oil & Gas
Power Generation (Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Hydro)
Single plants 100-2000+ MW; major IPPs and IOUs operate fleets of 10-50+ plants. Combined cycle plants typical 500-1200 MW; nuclear units 800-1400 MW each.
Gas peakers and combined cycle dominate new build. Coal is in managed retirement. Nuclear is the most rigid environment in the entire MRO industry — every chemical, every part, every contractor goes through QA Level 1 review. Hydro is small but very long-lived equipment.
Renewables (Utility-Scale Solar, Wind, Battery Storage)
Utility-scale solar farms 50-500+ MW; wind farms 100-800+ MW with 50-200 turbines; BESS 50-300 MWh. Operated by IPPs, utilities, and increasingly private equity-backed YieldCos.
Newest sub-segment in the vertical. O&M is leaner than thermal generation but growing fast. Wind especially is its own world — gearbox lubrication, blade maintenance, climbing PPE. Solar is mostly cleaning, vegetation, inverter swaps. BESS adds new fire/EHS exposure.
Refining & Petrochemical
US refineries range 25,000 bpd (small specialty) to 600,000+ bpd (Gulf Coast supermajors). 130 operating US refineries. Petrochem complexes often co-located. Multi-billion-dollar capital footprint per site.
The most pain-point-rich sub-segment in this vertical and arguably the entire MRO industry. T/A cycles every 4-6 years drive the majority of MRO spend. PSM compliance is sacred. One unplanned trip on a coker can cost $10M+. Heavy union workforce in many regions.
Upstream Oil & Gas (Drilling, Completions, Production)
Operators range from majors (Exxon, Chevron) to small independents (50-500 wells). Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, Marcellus, Haynesville are the active US basins. Lots of contractor-of-contractor structure.
Boom/bust cycle dictates everything. When rig count is up, demand for everything is up — and lead times go to hell. Field-driven, with company-man and toolpushers running daily decisions. Far less centralized than refining. Lots of consumables — pipe dope, drilling chemicals, PPE, lubes.
Midstream (Pipelines, Terminals, Gas Processing)
Major operators (Enterprise, Energy Transfer, Williams, Kinder Morgan) run nationwide systems. Compressor stations every 50-100 miles. Storage terminals at hubs. Gas processing plants at field gathering points.
PHMSA-regulated. Pipeline integrity programs (ILI, hydrostatic test, cathodic protection) are the dominant operational driver. Facilities are unmanned or lightly-manned with traveling tech crews. Long-term consumable contracts are common.
Water & Wastewater Treatment (Municipal & Industrial)
Municipal plants from 1 MGD (small) to 1000+ MGD (NYC, Chicago). Industrial wastewater varies massively. Many municipal plants operated by private contractors (Veolia, Suez, Jacobs, Severn Trent).
Municipal water plants run on city/county budgets — slower buying motion, more like government. Operator certification (Class I-IV) drives a lot of training-adjacent product purchasing. Aging infrastructure across the US. EPA NPDES discharge permits are the master compliance document.
Key personas you'll meet
5 researched personas for Energy, Utilities, Oil & Gas. Each one carries its own vocabulary, pain-point ranking, and discovery question bank — used to make every brief persona-specific.