THREE Canadian companies see opportunities in Brunei's oil and gas and water sectors and are currently looking for local partners to work with, representatives from the companies yesterday said.

Pure Technologies (China) Limited, Pipeline Inspection and Condition Analysis (Pica) Corporation and Aquatic Informatics are solutions and services companies that specialise in pipe and waterworks.

They were brought in by the High Commission of Canada to network with local companies.

The companies' representatives attended the recent Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) Vendor Forum and met with potential local partners at the forum.

"The BSP Vendor Forum was very informative and we met a number of people there, and I found that there was generally a very high level of interest, and a willingness to form partnerships with companies from the local businesses that I've met," said Jon Boon, general manager of Pure Technologies.

Pure Technologies is a company that specialises in leakage detection and provides systems and solutions that can determine pipeline leaks as little as 0.1 litre per minute.

He said the Water Department is also a potential customer.

Pica, which specialises in pipeline inspection, with a technology that detects where the faults are in a pipeline and determines how to repair the pipe, also sees opportunities in the Brunei market, particularly with BSP.

The company's technology is currently being used in Singapore and by Shell Canada and the company hopes that its work for Shell Canada will provide reference for BSP, should the company have similar needs.

"We have to learn the local market, meet local people and if we manage to meet the right person to partner with, then it would mean that we are halfway to success," said Vincent Shen, marketing director of Pica.

Aquatic Informatics, a company that specialises in providing water-related environmental data gathered from lakes, dams, reservoirs, and others, sees opportunities in both the public and private sector.

"We see a potential in the mix of public and private sector, because the government manages the environmental aspects, and we see that there are quite a number of private operations who do their own treatment and monitoring so there are some opportunities there as well," said Boudewijin Neijens of Aquatic Informatics.

He added that one of the challenges with entering a new country was the need to learn and network with the local businesses.

He said that in their field of work, one of the biggest challenges is that "many governments see that environmental monitoring is secondary".

"Most governments will put more money into building a new road or terminal to the airport and environmental monitoring is not always seen as very important, because it's very long term," he said. However, Neijens sees the potential with Brunei due to the fact that the majority of the land that Brunei has will be kept as an environmental reserve.

All three execs said that their visit to Brunei was successful, and that they will be planning to return to the Sultanate to continue networking and building business opportunities.The Brunei Times