The third installment of our Energy Executive profiles to hit our podcast channel. Whitley Penn Talks welcomes David Ramsden-Wood! Sit down with Nathen McEown, Partner in Charge of the firm's Houston office, as he talks with David Ramsden-Wood. David is known for his "#hottakesoftheday" on LinkedIn where he has gained quite a following within the Oil & Gas Industry. Learn about his time at Anadarko Petroleum, One Energy Partners, Franklin Mountain Energy, his new book coming out, and his...

A small break from 2020 expectations... Can you imagine if the ‘Block de Texas’ was a political party in the US?   What do you think they would focus on. Texas issues? Houston?  Austin? BBQ? Probably. (Even though, let’s be honest, I love Texas BBQ!) But. In the US- this would be abhorrent. We can’t even have 2 functional parties- much less 5! Question: how can a national party be from one state (Province)?  Never. Not in a first world country, right? Wrong. Enter...

Over the weekend, I re-read ‘Boomerang’. In it, Lewis investigates how the financial crisis hit Greece, Iceland and Ireland, among others. The chapter on Ireland was relevant to O&G in particular. A random academic noted bizarre investment behavior and wrote a paper that anticipated the crisis. Instead of listening, everyone went on TV and to the papers to scream at him and tell the world he was an idiot. And then a year later, you know what, he was right. Don’t you hate that? My new...

I’ve been reading more Canadian news of late as our neighbours to the North gear up for a national election that pits economic potential against climate change and subsidies. Needless to say- the latter is likely to win on Monday but that’s not the point of this post (Sadly ‘right’ is less important than ‘electable’) BC is a beautiful province and the California of Canada. That gov’t has been very active in stopping Alberta from building a pipeline across BC and thus preventing it from exporting otherwise...

Over the past 10 months, the hottake has explored the rig count/ production growth paradox; took stock at NAPE that “water was the new oil” and “drill your returns” were the mantras of the year; sparked an email etiquette controversy; laid a beating on the disciplines over stagnating capital efficiency; called peak US oil in August ‘19 and finally- belatedly came to the realization that the crisis we are facing is not one of commodity prices but of balance sheets. As a result of my big mouth,...

This week, we had a data driven discussion about modern society and highlighted a choice: to continue consumption while making cheap goods offshoring higher emissions (the status quo) or we can bring production back to the US where we control the regulations. In a way, the narrative of the trade war could have been more successful if the President said the bringing production back to US was about modernizing our power grid and reducing the carbon footprint of our consumerism. So-TVs. American made. Lower carbon footprint. 20%...

We pivot from the choices of consumption- that politicians and activists alike don’t like to talk about- to production where in some small part; I feel very qualified to discuss. I like fact driven debate with stats and data and testimonials- as much or more than anyone else who chooses not to watch broadcast news. And as tonight unfolded as the time to write my Hottake approached - I thought about all the ways I could make this point.  But I realized I have 20 years of experience....

If we see the ‘energy problem’ through the eyes of the consumer of said energy, there is a lot to contemplate. China’s raw energy consumption is 75% higher than the US. 66% of their electricity is generated from coal. Of the 800,000 deaths a year globally from the problems with coal electricity generation, 670,000 of those are in China. There are 1.4b people and at present, each uses 1/3 the amount of energy as the American consumer. Have you ever heard of a ‘no peeing section in...

Today’s post is simple. Why are we pointing fingers and yelling when what we should be doing is having fact driven debates? Our kids now have air conditioning in their classrooms even though we didn’t; I had a AA battery powered Gameboy while my kids play all sorts of games with headsets to talk to kids all over the world over the internet on a 70” screen; I stream Netflix (a lot); I order from Amazon; I store data on the cloud; And I need...

Worldwide, 800,000 people a year die from coal related illnesses.  Less than a few thousand have died from nuclear.  Ever.  Chernobyl was 1940s design and most nuclear power in the US is based on ‘60s. 43% of California’s electricity in ‘17 was generated from Natural Gas. 67% of the natural gas produced in the United States comes from fracing (it is actually spelled without a k- a derivation of fracture stimulation). It takes 150 tonnes of coal to make a 2 MW wind turbine. It needs 1.5 acres of land....