Claudi Santiago – GE’s Envoy To the World’s Oil & Gas Industry

To have been a fly on the wall when GE Chairman and CEO Jack Welch picked up the phone in 1997 and called one of his rising young stars, a fellow named Claudi Santiago, about heading a new business segment that would later be called GE Oil & Gas.

If the legendary now-retired executive is known for one over-riding quality, it was for picking the right person for the right job. In Santiago, he saw the makings of a world-class businessman blessed with the intelligence, personality, drive and the curiosity to lead a new business into unchartered and often treacherous directions.

In an interview with P&GJ during a turbomachinery conference in Houston, Santiago, 52, recalled the day he took Welch’s call. At the time, he was in Paris directing GE Information Systems in Europe. Having worked with GE Information Services since he was recruited from the Universidad Autonma of Barcelona in 1980, Santiago probably never envisioned that he would someday become an expert on gas turbines, compressors and the pipeline inspection process.

“He (Welch) asked me to go into the oil and gas industry because we wanted to expand our presence. I told him that I knew little about it but he said he wanted me to go there because this is an industry that needs people who can innovate and can look at things with a fresh pair of eyes.

“‘You’re coming from the software industry that is used to fast innovation and the telecommunications business that is used to applying significant amounts of time and resources into technology so I am convinced that you will make a difference over time,’” Welch told Santiago.

While he may have been satisfied spending the rest of his career with information services, Santiago had been around long enough to know that when you received a call from the chairman, something was in mind for you, leaving you with two options: “either you go, or…you go.”

GE had just made its first major step in owning an energy company with the purchase of Nuovo Pignone turbine company in Florence. Santiago, a native of Spain who is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian, joined Nuovo Pignone and established its Aftermarket Services unit, which today accounts for a significant portion of GE Oil & Gas’ revenues by providing services ranging from product upgrades, customized service agreements, remote monitoring & diagnostics, and field-based technical assistance.

In 1999, Santiago was named senior vice president of GE and President & CEO of GE Oil & Gas. Today, GE Oil & Gas is a world-class company with activities on every continent and a major component of GE Energy Infrastructure with 12,000 employees involved in providing equipment and services for transportation, LNG, production, storage, refineries and petrochemicals. It is also one of the struggling corporation’s few profit centers.

During the interview, the industry was still struggling from the effects of the global recession, financial meltdown and sluggish energy prices. All of these are affecting GE Oil & Gas, but its leader offers a global perspective that is confident the industry will recover from its latest cyclical downturn. Meeting long-term challenges of providing enough oil and gas to feed an energy-thirsty world will not be so easy, however.