"If The Government Would Get Out Of The Way, We Could Get This Done" - A Discussion with Howard Newman

Today we had an absolutely stellar guest for our COBT discussion, Howard Newman. Howard's career in energy and financial services has included 15 years at Pine Brook Partners, 22 at Warburg Pincus, 10 at Morgan Stanley, and over 45 board roles. His knowledge and perspective are difficult to match and his friendship with us is something we are most lucky to have. As you will hear in the discussion, our topics ranged from private versus public investing, terminal values in classic energy, US drilling inventory, charting the energy transition at the Board level, LNG, nature-based solutions, and of course, what does the energy world look like in ten years? It was a tour de force summary of learnings from all the things Howard has seen and done in his ongoing trailblazing career.

Mike Bradley started us off with a discussion of the markets this past week and year-to-date. He also touched on the BP earnings call from this morning as well as some recent comments from Blackrock on oil and gas investing. Colin Fenton attacked two key topics today. First, we leaned into the data on oil as a hedge against inflation. It's a meaty topic for a five-minute overview, but Colin did a masterful job of analyzing the data. Second, Colin looked at the current condition of the oil market through the lens of futures prices and their presently low volatility. The upshot is the oil recovery most likely still has several years of room to run, despite the speed of the advance to $90 WTI. But as you will hear, we try and bracket this positive outlook, and perhaps temper enthusiasm somewhat, given the occasional large bumps in the road very likely to be encountered over the next 24 months. You will also hear Howard Newman pick up that balanced perspective and discuss why, how, and when capital will return to the oil and gas industry.