After 49 years in operation, West Texas Gas — known as WTG — is getting a new name: WTG Energy.
A growing energy trend is the increasing demand for natural gas, and WTG, a portfolio company of Tailwater, has served as a transmission and distribution company since 1976. The Midland-based company has grown to approximately 1,600 noncontiguous transmission pipelines and more than 6,000 miles of distribution mainlines serving 25,000 residential and 6,000 commercial and industrial customers.
“We’ve been excited about investing in this market,” said Drew Winston, managing director at Tailwater. “We talked with WTG several years before buying it.”
Winston said his company sees WTG Energy as an attractive platform to grow its existing customer base, expand connectivity and add new customers. WTG Energy plans to target data centers, which are increasingly seeking natural gas as both a primary and backup power source.
A second growth trend Winston sees is manufacturing reshoring and industrial growth. Along Texas’ Interstate 35 corridor, there is a buildout of manufacturing capacity that WTG can supply with natural gas, he said.
And third, Texas’ population growth offers WTG the chance to add residential customers, he said.
Orgil Batsaikhan, WTG Energy president and chief financial officer, sees widespread opportunities, with “a lot happening in Texas in terms of population growth.”
Batsaikhan said the company is investing a lot of capital in modernizing WTG, both in terms of physical infrastructure and in its systems and data infrastructure. He said the company has recently begun an $18 million project to swap out existing residential meters with smart meters and then will do the same with commercial meters.
“Because we have such an extensive footprint, we are the logical gas partner” for data centers or other industrial uses, he said.
WTG is a local gas distribution company in 30 incorporated towns and cities in Texas and 12 in Oklahoma. Batsaikhan said those relationships could lead to a presence in other states. The company also hopes to expand its footprint not only in Texas and Oklahoma but into New Mexico as well, he said.
“We’re working on a project in Arizona. The same company building a data center in Texas is building one in Arizona,” he explained.
A key to growth for WTG will be its long-term relationships with existing customers and the ability to build relationships with new customers, Winston said.
“And with that growth comes the need for a larger workforce. We’ve been actively hiring since the acquisition,” Winston said. The headquarters will remain in Midland.
Being from Midland, he said he is aware of the legacy of WTG and its founder, J.L. Davis, and said it’s exciting to be part of that legacy.