PakEnergy CEO Santosh Nanda Stakes Ground in the Energy Transition Land Rush

As the world progresses, software solutions have infiltrated all sectors and industries. The energy industry is no different, with its growing dependency on software to retrieve data, manipulate, integrate, process, and visualize it for a specific outcome. The oil and gas industry alone has become highly intuitive with its use of automation and optimization systems. Upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors have all witnessed incredible benefits from innovative software solutions that are increasingly built on the cloud as SaaS (software as a service).

PakEnergy is a SaaS solution provider for the oil and gas industry. It positively impacts the business’ land management, production operations, accounting, and transportation components, each critical to driving profitability.

As the chief executive officer of PakEnergy, Santosh Nanda understands the importance of the company’s ability to enhance data and enable efficiency, which impacts profitability. He earned a Bachelor of Computer Science and Engineering degree from Bangalore University in India and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Arlington. His stellar educational background established the foundation of his leadership. As the vice president of Sabre Corporation, Nanda solidified the accomplishments in his career as his direction over the company’s technology organization produced over $100 million in annual revenues. Through a deep understanding of customer goals and his proven track record of success, he feels PakEnergy is waging that game-changing success.

“A big part of our success has been PakEnergy’s deep understanding of the challenges our customers face each day. They’re looking to effectively manage a lot of very nuanced and, frankly, sometimes overwhelming obligations and are under pressure to drive more profits with leaner teams,” says Nanda. “Our products are built and continually enhanced by experienced energy professionals for energy professionals. That makes a big difference in the quality and relevancy of products and our ongoing customer success efforts.”

Personal Transition: From Oil and Gas to Renewables

Nanda brings over 25 years of leadership and knowledge earned in the software industry to PakEnergy. Driven by a hyper-focus on meeting customer needs and a results-driven mindset, the CEO has harnessed a career of success exacting impacts in the commercial, operational, product, M&A and technology arenas. This expertise provides him with the arsenal needed to positively impact the energy industry. Until recently, PakEnergy concentrated only on the oil and gas sector, but Nanda exhibited the foresight to see another way to meet the needs of a new customer base in the energy transition.

“Only the oil and gas industry has faced the large-scale challenge of land management that renewable energy and carbon capture operators face, which we saw as a rare opportunity to redeploy our proven technology into the energy transition,” says Nanda. He reasons that because PakEnergy has developed category leading land management software for the oil and gas industry and continues to innovate, that it is uniquely positioned to build on a time-tested technology foundation to tailor solutions that fit the unique needs of the energy transition.

Boasting incredible growth over the past decade in solar power alone, Nanda reasons the renewable energy industry support skyrocketed due to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions of investor tax credits developers need to combat today’s increased capital costs. Paired with falling costs, U.S. solar manufacturing capacity doubled last year. And although wind has lost some of the momentum in its sails due to rising supply chain costs, wind and geothermal projects are another important aspect of the clean energy mix that have seen growth over the last decade. 

Identifying the Need

Nanda recognized the need to enable efficiency in the land rush accompanying the energy transition. Having the foresight to identify essential factors and needs has been a staple of the experience Nanda brings to the table. Before joining the PakEnergy team, he led E2open as the general manager. He oversaw the metamorphosis of go-to-market and product strategies, leading to significant organizational growth and increased profitability. When studying the globe’s conversion to renewable energy use, Nanda saw the need for assistance at multiple levels, including screening acreage, tracking agreement obligations, and effectively managing utility-scale projects.

“Many of our current land customers and several new customers in the clean energy space were coming to us asking for help managing their land and mineral assets and compliance efforts,” he explains. “Like our land customers, many of these clean energy companies have multiple land leases to track and maintain and they are continually prospecting areas of interest and working to prove out whether those areas are worthy of a more long-term lease agreement.”

Managing Multiple Facets

According to Nanda, clean energy companies face the large scale challenge of acquiring and managing the surface rights needed to construct and operate projects.

Leases and easement agreements must be signed with multiple landowners to secure surface rights as well as subsurface rights for geothermal wells and CO2 injection.

Clean energy operators must also communicate with property owners regularly and pay lease fees and royalties promptly to avoid steeper costs and potential lease renegotiations. Lease performance must also be continually evaluated, potentially driving renegotiation activity. Nanda says this catalyzed PakEnergy’s desire to develop a solution for solar, wind and geothermal customers. The benefits extend to carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) project developers who face similar land management challenges.

“Most people do not realize that the McDonald’s corporation, for instance, generates most of its revenue not from burgers but from real estate it owns and on which franchise owners pay leases,” says Nanda. “Similarly, clean energy companies may be in the business of generating megawatt hours, but they are also in the land business – although many teams may not have fully appreciated just how complex acquiring the acreage they need would be or recognize the long-term challenges of managing those leases or easement agreements and the obligations involved.”

The oil and gas industry faces these same challenges, but using PakEnergy’s technology, they easily navigate the complexities of acquiring land use rights, negotiating agreements, and meeting obligations to landowners. Nanda says PakEnergy capitalized on what was already established for oil and gas customers, which allowed the company to build upon a successful foundation and develop a solution that adequately meets the unique needs of the energy transition.

Software Puts the “New” in Renewables

According to Nanda, the company developed Pak Renewables, a software package offered nowhere else. It allows renewable energy customers to automate processes and delivers a real-time vantage into operations. This high visibility focus enables the customer to continue positively growing its portfolio while successfully managing obligations and maintaining assets.

Renewable energy developers oversee capital intensive projects and attempt to manage work streams that become increasingly compartmentalized as they contemplate project delivery and how to satisfy multiple demands. “There’s not another solution on the market that organizes the chaos developers face from the preliminary work of finding project sites, permits, and land use agreements to power purchase agreements, site construction, interconnection, and operations,” Nanda points out.

“Pak Renewables is a product that generates immediate value for users which was important to us,” says Nanda. “Take site selection, for example. We’ve taken the location data from the two so-called energy communities described in the Inflation Reduction Act and the 190,000 brownfield sites identified in the EPA’s Re-Powering America’s Land initiative and pre-loaded it into a modern GIS solution built on the leading Esri platform. Users can instantly narrow their search for project sites with the map layers showing the best acreage for investor tax credits.”

Pak Renewables assists companies in simplifying and accelerating the land acquisition process, capturing ownership and division of interest, tracking royalty payments, and managing owner relations. As a project management tool, Pak Renewables supports the customer’s workflow from start to finish and enables companies the capacity to structure documents, agreements, and contracts at every stage of the process for rapid search, reporting, negotiations, and auditing activity.

Keeping Landowners Happy

Like the oil and gas industry has learned over many decades, successfully securing the land needed for long term energy projects is about cultivating relationships with landowners who are protected by the terms of the agreements they sign. To accomplish this, Nanda explains that clean energy operators must track these multiple agreements, each with its terms and expirations. Essential provisions such as payment obligations must be tracked daily to ensure royalty owners are paid timely, and special terms are met based on contract agreements.

“Pak Renewables helps by capturing agreement metadata as leases or easement agreements are signed,” says Nanda. “It allows users to monitor agreements by exception with a powerful eCalendar that shows upcoming expiration and important deadlines. With business automation features like this, clean energy operators reduce risks while operating with a lean team.”

Next Level Cybersecurity

Another challenge that clean energy operators face is data security. The data cultivated by PakEnergy contains confidential information only for specific people and departmental use. Nanda points to a high level of security made available through three strategies.

Pak Renewables is built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, which contains an integrated high-level security presence that includes advanced firewalls, application isolation, and real-time monitoring. PakEnergy takes security to the next level by building on the AWS foundation with its data security platform and granular user permissions.

According to Nanda, another Pak Renewables strategy includes a robust backup management plan that automatically replicates the customer’s database, storing it in a cloud vault with redundant copies and physical backups stored offline. The final strategy employed by Pak Renewables resides in PakEnergy’s SOC 2 certification. A third party audits the company’s technology annually, and the system and security controls are heavily surveyed. These essential measures provide high protection against cybersecurity threats, including malware and ransomware.

Moving into the future, there is no doubt that businesses will continue to widen their dependency on software solutions to meet growing demands, increase profitability, and offer the absolute best services to customers. Information or data control is the primary focus of importance. With Pak Renewables’ capability in retrieving, cultivating and processing data for the many components of clean energy land management, its platform must remain multidirectional and continue to impact the information that drives each business model element. Pak Renewables’ ability to accomplish this provides a snapshot of the power that information management will bring in the future.

Information is Power

“Pak Renewables is truly multifaceted,” says Nanda. “Because of the large scale land use, agreement, and owner relations challenges clean energy companies face, Pak Renewables offers a complete land management solution. It is a central hub for a clean energy company’s critical documents, providing rapid-fire search and filtering when information is needed for reporting, audit or asset divestiture. Moreover, documents are organized according to each customer’s unique organizational structure using a configurable hierarchy.” Business intelligence is another critical component that clean energy developers and asset operators need to mine their data for insights and better compete for acreage, which is why the solution boasts advanced BI capabilities and a powerful self-service report builder.

This cultivation and manipulation of data gives PakEnergy customer’s the tremendous power of information control. Amidst a full scale land rush for project sites, the ability to quickly drill down to suitable acreage, filter out the opportunity set, and integrate data from across clean energy workflows is urgently needed to efficiently manage large project pipelines, from site selection through day to day operations where land management plays such a crucial role. The outcome proves just how powerful information can be.

When gaining a respite from the responsibility of leading PakEnergy’s first mover charge into the clean energy transition while continuing to double down on innovation for its traditional customers, Nanda retreats to what brings him peace and balance. Mirroring the same level of skill he brings to PakEnergy, he is an avid golfer and takes advantage of any opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and improve his game. While that brings happiness, Nanda finds the ultimate satisfaction in spending time and being a fixture in his family as they inspire his daily efforts in what he brings to the table with PakEnergy: Now, it is a clean energy opportunity.

For more information, please visit www.pakenergy.com.

Headline photo: Santash Nanda at work in the company’s newest office in Frisco, TX. Photos courtesy of PakEnergy.