While there is no such thing as a "typical" day for Steve Markovich, chief commercial officer for Caliche Development Partners, one primary focus permeates every aspect of his job: positioning Caliche for maximum profitable growth.
According to Markovich, this could mean negotiating long-term storage contracts, strategizing with business development personnel on pipeline acquisitions, working with Caliche's CEO and CFO on mergers and acquisitions, or meeting with industry leaders to understand the unique challenges they face as the energy transition accelerates.
"'Commercial' is a very broad term, but being a startup means that it usually involves an 'all-hands-on-deck' approach when there is a problem to be solved or an opportunity to pursue," Markovich said.
“Our legacy will be our position at the forefront of the energy transition.” — Steve Markovich, Caliche Development Partners
Caliche is a Houston-based company focused on the acquisition, development, construction, ownership and operation of subsurface gas and liquid storage assets in North America, with a primary focus on the Gulf Coast. Caliche owns a 400-plus acre facility on and around the Spindletop salt dome near Beaumont, Texas, which has permits for 59 million barrels of cavern storage space.
With hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration playing key roles in addressing climate change and reducing CO2 emissions, Caliche is committed to being a regional leader in sustainability. Specifically, the company is exploring the use of its underground storage expertise to support Golden Triangle Area emitters in their energy transition efforts, actively supporting new legislation and sitting on the Carbon Neutral Coalition's advisory board, which is tasked with putting Texas on a path toward carbon neutrality by 2050.
Markovich grew up in Butte, Montana, and received a degree in chemical engineering from Montana State, where he played football for the Bobcats. He moved to Houston in 1994 to pursue a career in chemical engineering, intending to stay for a year or two before moving back north. However, life had different plans for him. "27 years, a wife and four kids later, Houston is still home," he said.
Markovich began his career working for Hoechst Celanese as a process engineer at its Clear Lake Plant.
"Being a young engineer in a manufacturing setting was an amazing experience," he said. "You learn very quickly that safety is the No. 1 priority and there is a very large drop off to the No. 2 priority. I also remember having one of those 'aha' moments when I realized that my college professors were great at teaching me why things work the way they do, but if I wanted to find out how to actually make things work, I would have to ask an operator."
While his time at Hoechst Celanese gave him great experience, the commercial end of the business was always Markovich's goal. He got his first commercial opportunity in the industrial gas business working a sales territory for Praxair (now Linde). After a short stint in sales, he was promoted to a product management role in Praxair's pipeline, hydrogen and carbon monoxide business.
"I gained lots of experience with steam methane reforming, ethane crackers and partial oxidation units," he said. "I also learned a lot about hydrogen balances in refineries and how to deal with competitors, as there were no hydrogen storage wells at the time and balancing a system was a challenge."
After several years with Praxair, Markovich enrolled at the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business, where he studied energy finance with the intent of going into energy trading afterward. He accepted a summer job at Enron, but the company went bankrupt before he could start. At that point, the steadiness of big oil began to appeal to him, and he accepted a job with ExxonMobil as a financial analyst.
It was not long before Markovich worked his way into a commercial role in ExxonMobil's olefins business. After 10 years there, though, he decided that he was ready to move on to a smaller company, and he found himself at Sasol. He spent nearly 10 years with Sasol, gaining experience in several new areas of business, before moving on to yet another new challenge at Caliche in July 2021.
"I attribute my success to having a high degree of intellectual curiosity," he said. "My career has taken me in many different directions. Each time I have moved into a new area of business, I have found great satisfaction in learning how the science, engineering and business aspects interact in each new market. I really embrace change because change is precisely what makes a career interesting.
"The advice I would give any person starting a commercial career would be to always act with integrity and never jeopardize your reputation or your company's reputation for one deal. Sometimes, you will have a lot of leverage in a particular deal and other times you will not. How you act when you are in a position of strength will largely determine how others will act when you are not in the best spot."
A growing company
According to Markovich, Caliche is at a "very exciting" point in its lifecycle.
"While COVID-19 was a significant challenge for many companies -- including Caliche -- we have just put our second storage well in service, which puts our business in a strong cash flow position," he said. "As capital spending comes back to life, we are poised to provide underground storage to the existing energy complex while diversifying our portfolio into opportunities brought about by the accelerating energy transition."
Caliche is a growing player in the underground storage industry. While the company may not currently have the scale of some of its competitors, it is nimble and flexible in the way it pursues opportunities, and its size allows it to have a very streamlined decision-making process, allowing the company to be ultra-responsive in addressing customer needs.
"We have great competency in underground projects," Markovich said. "Traditionally, those opportunities would have been almost exclusively in oil and gas, but we see now that what Caliche brings to the table is even more applicable to the hydrogen economy and carbon sequestration opportunities.
"The Caliche team is focused on building a best-in-class storage platform that addresses the needs of a diversified group of customers and helps to usher in a new and transformed energy economy. Our legacy will be our position at the forefront of the energy transition."
An evolving industry
According to Markovich, there is "no doubt" about what the biggest issue facing the industry is: climate change. Caliche is focused on addressing this issue by enabling its customers' zero-carbon emissions pledges, he said. When he first entered the industry, the concept of environmental stewardship was narrowly defined as "not polluting the air or water." Over the years, the scope of environmental stewardship has grown to include sustainability and even regeneration.
"In the past 10 years, we have seen the concept of sustainability talked about and contemplated, but we are now at the point where the talk and contemplation is being put into action," he said. "It is very exciting to be a part of that implementation.
"The future of our industry will be centered around providing renewable energy and products that allow the planet to continue to grow within planetary limits, while also maintaining our standard of living."
For more information, visit www.calichestorage.com or call (832) 500-7590.