There were no guarantees and no safety nets when Debi Sport Moore assayed, in mid-career, to build a business of her own. But she took her chance and made something of it. Today Sport Environmental Services is setting a standard for what it means to be an environmental services firm.
By Al Pickett, Special Contributor
In the past, when operators leased acreage, the only thing they were concerned with was whether or not there was oil or gas available on their property. Or they might want to know what nearby infrastructure existed to help deliver their hydrocarbons to market.
In today’s climate, however, operators also need to know what possible environmental risks pose threats to their oil or gas production. That is where Sport Environmental Services, a Midland-based company, comes in.
Among the myriad of services Sport Environmental provides the oil and gas industry is risk management, according to Debi Sport Moore, the company’s founder. Using GISport, the company’s proprietary Geographic Information System (GIS), Sport Environmental can assess some of the environmental risks of greatest interest to operators.
“For example,” Moore explained, “we can overlay publicly available habitat layers for the Lesser Prairie Chicken and the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard to show which of an operator’s facilities might be impacted should the species be listed as endangered in the future. This helps with risk management of publicly traded companies. Everyone has different levels of risk, and we assist them to make their own judgment.”
Moore is someone of “very high intellect,” according to Richard Brantley, senior vice president of operations at University Lands. “She analyzes things well and is very industry-aligned with her assessments,” Brantley said. “She really looks out for her customers. I was with her last week and I find her to be able to digest a lot of information. She also keeps good people around her. Some of the matters we deal with can be complicated things to look at, and yet she can wrap her mind around it. And can do so while yet being cautious [in her judgments] and without being presumptive. She’s always helping her customers to comply [with regulations] and to do so in a smart, economical fashion. I find her to be very capable.”
Moore grew up in Midland. After earning a Masters degree from Tulane University as an environmental engineer, she moved back to her hometown from Louisiana to raise her children. When Moore’s husband passed away, she said she initially went to work for BTA Oil Producers to “learn the oil and gas industry.” Then, in March of 2005, she went out on her own and launched Sport Environmental Services, basing the company name on her maiden name.
“I started the business to take care of family needs,” Moore said, citing the flexibility that a business owner has in setting his or her own work schedule.
She remarried—her now-husband is Sean Moore—ten years ago, some three years after she had started Sport Environmental. Her four kids—two boys, two girls—are now aged 16, 17, 18, and 20.
The company currently employs 12 people in Midland and handles a wide variety of consulting work for the oil and gas industry in addition to risk management. Moore said larger operators may have their own environmental departments in-house, but need assistance. Other, smaller companies don’t have the staff to do the environmental assessments.
“Initially, we will do the environmental assessment so they know what they are getting,” she explained. “We can audit their facilities prior to purchase and help with their compliance filings. In a divestiture, each Dropbox link is very organized. In many cases, we have clients through the life of the property until they sell it.”
GISport runs on ESRI’s ArcGIS software and originally functioned as an intra-office tool for Sport Environmental employees to improve the company’s data management practice and increase efficiency. Moore said GISport is a “holding place for all information,” beginning with where the operator’s lease, facilities, and infrastructure are located.
“GISport works in tandem with our office’s other efforts to optimize data management by using custom, digital solutions,” Moore offered. “For example, the mobile forms we have created to capture data while performing site reconnaissance for our oil and gas clients allow us to efficiently record GPS coordinates, collect site-specific data (such as temperature and pressure measurements, equipment specifications, photographs, etc.), and generate an electronic document which can be uploaded to GISport to demonstrate compliance with various environmental rules and regulations.”
Sport Environmental can import and export spread sheets. They keep up with renewal dates for their clients, and they pull all required permits as well. Moore said her company deals with all the regulatory agencies on behalf of their clients, including but not limited to the Texas Railroad Commission, University Lands, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Sport Environmental does work in New Mexico, Louisiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma, as well as Texas.
GISport can layer an unlimited number of maps, but Moore says Sport Environmental typically selects five or six layers, depending on what information its client is seeking. It also has the ability to toggle on or toggle off any particular layer so its client can look at what it is specifically searching.
“Believe it or not, our use of GIS came about because we kept losing paper files,” Moore recalled. “We wanted to make sure all the data is available in one copy. We can email it to the right department that can trigger a work order. During the downturn, we worked on a better way to do things.”
Keeping up with the ever-changing environmental regulations can be a challenge, especially air compliance regulations.
“As regulations change, you have to adapt,” she admitted. “We run the calculations and help our clients do their due diligence to make sure they don’t need a permit and their emissions are at allowable levels. We also provide GIS information on all inventory and assets, which can be used for a purchasing agreement. It might also help them sell equipment that isn’t being used.”
Moore said clients often come to Sport Environmental with a specific request but end up using the GISport data is a variety of ways.
“Our clients are amazed by what we have,” she stated. “They love our 3-D models that they can use on the operational side. As they say, ‘good data in, good data out.’ The land men use it and the regulatory agencies use it to determine water levels or potential endangered species habitat locations.”
She said her company often ends up doing everything, including the paperwork for its clients related to the property in question. Sport Environmental collects data, helps take care of cleanups, tracks equipment, and handles the required permits.
“We have found that GISport helps our clients at all stages—whether they are focused on identifying areas for improvement, managing inventory, minimizing liabilities, or maintaining compliant operations,” Moore said. “Our clients have also seen the benefits that GISport and our other digital services offer when divestitures or acquisitions take place. Having well-organized electronic documents readily available makes it possible to easily demonstrate compliance and to rapidly review the latest information on potential acquisitions.”
Well-organized—that’s a description that could fit Moore herself. As a self-made businesswoman who has encountered and dealt with one of life’s hardest occasions—the too-early death of a spouse—she has had to reach within herself, and likely many times. But on the back side of such adversity, there are good feelings too. And she’s found ways to sustain herself. How does Debi Sport Moore nurture Debi Sport Moore? One way is through oil painting—one of her primary outlets. Another is through cooking—she loves to cook. But maybe the most restorative thing that she and her family engage in is their frequent getaways to their ranch.
She and her husband Sean own a 330-acre ranch near Goldsboro, Texas, about 30 miles south of Abilene, and it is there that the family retreats with regularity.
“For us, it’s pretty much a ‘recreational’ ranch, something we use for hunting and weekend getaways,” Moore said, though she allowed that there’s plenty of work that goes into the property—work that involves all six of them.
“We take the kids down there, and get them away from their cell phones and teach them a work ethic,” she said. “As my husband says, ‘It’s an expensive lesson,’ [laughter] but if they [the kids] build the ranch themselves, then when they own it they’ll appreciate it more.”
As for her work life, Moore is philosophical.
“When I began my business, my father gave me some advice I still follow,” she remarked. “He said, ‘Do what you say you are going to do. Do it timely and for a fair price and you’ll be successful.’ His words, along with my beliefs that ‘one should always be honest, humble, and kind’ have proven to be good character traits I try to always aspire to.”
Appreciation for life’s good things, as well as for its hard-earned things and its hard lessons, is all part of what it means to be a business owner, but it’s also part of what it means to be a worker in the Permian oil patch—and that’s a role Moore shares with a whole lot of West Texans and New Mexicans too.
Al Pickett, a freelance writer and contributor to multiple oil and gas publications, also is a sportscaster and former sports editor. His latest book, Mighty, Mighty Matadors: Estacado High School, Integration, and a Championship Season), recounts the historic 1968 title run of a Texas high school football team.