january 2010 NEWSLETTER

Every February, Whitaker gathers together all of our offices for our annual "State of the Business" meeting. It is a time for us as an organization to reflect on the past year and look ahead to our goals for the future. While thinking over our division's obstacles and achievements of the past year in preparation for this year's meeting, I thought it would also be interesting to do a recap of the downstream marketplace in 2009 and our predictions and hopes for 2010.

2009 brought about a new age in the Downstream and Midstream marketplace. Over the course of the year, over 700k BPD was taken out of the market through plant closures and unit shutdowns. Gasoline consumption had its sharpest decline in 44 years and the price of a barrel of oil hit an all-time low. Companies that used to be the big name players in the market slowly lost their foothold at the top, leaving more candidates than ever before on the market and looking for new opportunities. Margins were smaller than ever, projects were canceled, and EPC firms struggled to keep their employees billable. However, we also saw many positive changes in the industry as well. We saw smaller, independent companies increase their market shares like never before in spite of conditions. Companies looked for ways to diversify their holdings through purchases and planned building of overseas locations. There was an increase focus on the Biofuels and Energy arenas, which opened up new opportunities for candidates and clients alike. Companies streamlined and, in many cases, became more efficient. Workers banded together to "get the job done" as a team. Most importantly, I think what we saw in 2009 was a chance for the market to stabilize and level itself out after a period of major growth.

While I don't think 2010 will be the year to take us back to the "golden days" of refining, I do think it offers opportunities for us to be cautiously optimistic. Companies are moving ahead with filling vital positions. Projects are starting to kick off and we are once again seeing companies doing their routine maintenance and turnaround work that has been on hold for so long. We are seeing the effects already in our office. Open positions have increased 67% from this time last year, and we have had more interviews the first 2 weeks of this year than we had the entire month of December (which was one of our busiest months of 2009). Clients are hiring. They are getting more optimistic about the market, they are exploring exciting new technology, and they are "getting back to basics", all of which present fantastic possibilities for this year.