Moser Energy Systems

Moser Energy Systems has been in business since 1973. Husband and wife, Jim and Kathy Moser, established the business as an industrial engine repair service. Jim trained as a mechanic in the Army and took his skillset from his workshop in Evansville, Wyoming, to industrial customers throughout the United States.

Over time, he had the opportunity to work on a little of everything and became known for being able to fix just about anything. By the 1980s, Jim was receiving calls from people throughout the United States looking for solutions to difficult problems with industrial engines. This evolved into a niche as he began to work with customers in the oilfields, producing well-head gas-powered generators to fuel their operations.

Now, the business continues to provide innovative solutions to industrial quandaries, producing durable, efficient generators for the oil industry and other heavy-use clients throughout the country. In its second generation of family ownership, Moser Energy Systems is led by Jim’s son, Randy Moser.

Randy and his childhood friend, Jakob Norman, began working for the business as teenagers. “I had been helping around the shop since I was 11,” Randy says. “At the age of 16, Jakob came to work with us. We would drive filters and parts around for my dad in Wyoming.”

Jakob worked on and off for the business as a young man, eventually leaving town to join the military. After serving in the Air Force and Army, he returned home to study law. As a lawyer, he worked as outside counsel for Moser Energy Systems before coming to work with the business again full time. He now serves as company vice president alongside Randy, the company’s president and CEO.

Tough stuff

Jakob identifies the company’s niche as a manufacturer of industrial energy equipment built to handle just about anything. “When we first started building these industrial generators, we took an automotive based engine and converted it to run on flare gas,” he explains. “Sure, you can make that work, but you wouldn’t expect that to run 2 million miles without stopping. In an oilfield they need these generators to keep running so they can keep producing oil”

“The package Randy saw through is exceeding industry standards in durability and the ability to handle different fuels,” adds Jakob. “What comes out of the ground isn’t the same 60 feet down the line, 2 miles away, or 200 miles away. On top of that, we have generators in Canada, Venezuela, Ecuador, Oman, and everywhere in between. This machinery operates in harsh conditions and our customers demand that durability.”

The company’s generators are typically used to power wellheads, pump jacks, down-hole pumps and other heavy industrial applications. “They can run just about anything you can imagine as long as there is a fuel source,” says Jakob. “They can handle well gas and anything cleaner, such as city gas or propane, so there is a lot of flexibility with the unit.”

Moser Energy Systems sources engines built by partner Power Energy Systems. “We make it all work together with the generator and enclosure,” Jakob explains. “Our team does all the wiring with our electrical panel on the assembly line here. We focus on the package and assembly. The smallest engine is a 6-cylinder, 8-liter engine and that ranges up to a 12-cylinder, 22-liter motor. Once the entire generator is packaged together, the average footprint is 8 feet by 14 feet from tongue to end of trailer and about 8 feet tall.

Creating and marketing high-value products

With a strong market share in the oil and gas industry, Moser Energy Systems has sustained growth over the last decade, despite the recent economic downturn. Jakob explains that the company’s largest challenge in 2015 is educating customers about how these generators work.

“We’re the biggest producer of this equipment in the U.S., but there are people who don’t believe it will work,” he elaborates. “The people who initially got in this business didn’t have the background to do it well and created products that would fail in the first year or so. Our units have more run time than anyone else in North America. We don’t feel a lot of pressure in the market. We keep charging forward. We are not worried about what other companies are doing, we focus on doing what we do well.”

Part of educating consumers is showing value. One of the company’s clients deployed 300 of Moser Energy Systems’ units and saved more than $60 million in diesel fuel and 18,000 entries on the landowners land. The same 300 units had the same effect of taking 5,500 cars off the road in a 12-month period because these generators only put out 1 percent of the emissions of a diesel counterpart.

After more than 40 years in business, the company continues to build on an already strong market share. Randy and Jakob are looking forward to continued growth, backed by a new facility completed in 2014 with five times the production capacity of the previous location. Moser Energy Systems is quickly filling up the space, ramping up production to crank out more industrial generators for a growing market.