Speakers

Chris Atherton is the President of EnergyNet, Inc. EnergyNet is an oil and gas asset acquisition and divestiture firm specializing in auction sales, sealed bid transactions and government lease sales. Chris has been part of the EnergyNet team since 2002. He has been actively involved as the firm has completed over $3B in transactions including sell-side mandates from thousands of Exploration and Production clients. Chris leads a multi-disciplinary team of 35 professionals specializing in land, technical, business development, marketing, IT and administration.

Chris has 16 years of experience in the energy industry. Chris graduated from Texas State in San Marcos with a business management and marketing degree. Prior to EnergyNet, Chris worked at the Enron Corporation in Houston, Texas

Chris currently serves as the Chairman of the Wildcatter’s Host Committee for the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. Chris served as the Chairman for the SPE-Gulf Coast Section Business Development Study Group for three years. He is also an active member of the IPAA, Texas Energy Alliance, ADAM Houston, ADAM Permian and Houston Producer's Forum. Chris holds series 39, 22 and 63 SEC licenses.

Philip is Vice President, Transactions & Deputy General Counsel, of EnerVest, Ltd.  He is responsible for overseeing the legal aspects of the company’s transactions and A&D activity as well as assisting the General Counsel on strategic legal initiatives.  Prior to his current role, Philip served as Vice President, Business Development & Transactions, and was responsible for sourcing investments and negotiating and managing many of the company’s acquisitions and divestitures.  During his tenure at EnerVest, Philip has served in various leadership roles in legal and business development and has worked on over $17 Billion in oil and gas transactions and numerous strategic corporate initiatives.  

Prior to joining EnerVest, Philip worked at Enron Corp. as both an analyst, providing fundamental analysis for crude and products traders, and as a trader, managing futures contracts on the NYMEX. Following law school, he practiced law at a complex commercial litigation firm.

Philip earned a Bachelor of Business Administration, with honors, from the University of San Diego and a Juris Doctor, with honors, from Southern Methodist University, where he was the recipient of a Dean’s Scholarship and served on the SMU Law Review Association. He is the past Chair of the Studio Group for the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum and the inaugural Houston Coordinator for the Young Professionals for the Oil, Gas and Energy Resource Law Section of the State Bar of Texas.  He is an active member of various oil and gas associations and currently serves on the Legal Committee for The Briar Club.

Karl Brensike is the Co-Founder and CEO of Haymaker Minerals & Royalties LLC. Haymaker was founded in 2013 and has since closed over 350 mineral and royalty acquisitions across the country. Haymaker currently owns mineral and royalty interests in over 13,000 producing wells spread across 20 states and 430 counties. Prior to forming Haymaker, Brensike was the Senior Managing Director of Cornerstone Acquisition & Management Co. Before joining the energy industry, Brensike was a wall street fund marketer and convertible bond analyst holding FINRA Series 7, 24, 55, and 63 licenses. Brensike is a graduate of the University of Southern California.

Steven Cobb is a Vice President of Pearl Energy Investments. Prior to joining Pearl, Steven spent five years at Pioneer Natural Resources, where he served as an Operations Engineer, Reservoir Engineer, and most recently, Supervisor of Investor Relations. 

Steven holds a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and an M.B.A. in finance from Southern Methodist University.

Elizabeth DeStephens is Vice President – Reserves & Corporate Development at California Resources Corporation, which spun off from Occidental Petroleum in December 2014.  She is responsible for reserves and valuation of CRC’s upstream assets for SEC reporting, credit agreements, external audits, and business development activities.  Previously, she served in various engineering roles at Ryder Scott, ExxonMobil, Occidental, and Raymond James Energy Investment Bank.  Ms. DeStephens has a B.S. in Materials Science from the University of Florida, an M.Eng. from the University of Houston, and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Derek Detring's career has been fully devoted to energy advisory, where he has completed over $8 billion in capital raising and M&A advisory transactions. Derek spent the first four years of his career at Merrill Lynch, where he primarily focused on capital raising and M&A assignments for large, publicly-listed companies, followed by four years at Integral Advisors, a boutique A&D advisory firm he co-founded in 2009, and finally Wells Fargo where he spent one year in their A&D group. For the past three years Derek has lead his new company, Detring Energy Advisors, which focuses on the mid-cap A&D market.

Derek graduated summa cum laude and first in his engineering class from Vanderbilt University and attended the Wharton Executive Education Program, where he passed with honors.

Jim Devlin is a founding partner and CEO of land and business development, director and secretary of Suemaur Exploration & Production LLC and its affiliated entities. He is a certified professional landman. Devlin is chairman of NAPE operators committee and is past secretary of the executive committee of the American Association of Professional Landmen (AAPL). He also is a long- serving director of the AAPL and is past chairman of the AAPL ethics, forms, annual meeting and the education committees. Devlin served on several additional committees within the AAPL, including the nominations committee, long range planning committee, publications committee and the issues management committee. TIPRO, in conjunction with the AAPL, AAPG and publishers of Texas Monthly magazine, named Devlin as “Best Landman” in its 2013 Texas Top Producers awards program. Devlin graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, majoring in petroleum land management. He is a founding member of the executive council of the University of Texas McCombs School of Business’ Energy Management Program.

Daniel Houghton serves as the Manager of Finance and Planning for Bruin E&P Operating, LLC where he focuses on corporate forecasting, analyzing potential and related transactions, and stakeholder relations. Prior to joining Bruin in 2017, he worked for over two years in J.P. Morgan’s Corporate Client Banking Energy Group concentrating on financing mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; and supporting recapitalization transactions for private equity backed and small to mid-cap oil and gas companies in the upstream, midstream, and services sectors. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance from Texas A&M University.

John Howie, Senior Vice President, Upstream, for Tellurian Inc., has more than three decades of experience managing and investing upstream energy assets, deploying some $2 billion in equity and debt across 80-plus companies and projects. He was most recently president of Impact Natural Resources and was a founder of Parallel Resource Partners and a member of the board of managers and the investment committee of the $700-million private-equity fund. He led Goldman Sachs E&P Capital in investing more than $1 billion in upstream opportunities and was a managing director at EnCap Investments LP and held engineering, finance and management positions with Range Resources, Apache and Amoco. He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from New Mexico State.

Stephanie Hyde is an Executive Director of PE Risk, a consulting firm providing tailored insurance and risk management solutions to clients focused on real asset and private equity investing.  Most recently Stephanie was an Executive Director of Morgan Stanley, acting as an internal risk and insurance consultant to Morgan Stanley’s Private Funds division, responsible for evaluating, structuring and negotiating complex insurance programs for assets under management in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.   Prior to Morgan Stanley, Stephanie was the Director of Insurance and Risk Management for Veolia Environment’s energy operations in North America.

Prior to joining Waveland, Mr. Jacobson, served as CO-CEO of Primary Natural Resources IV, LLC and CEO of Whisper Rock Resources, LLC. Prior to serving with those two private E&P companies, Mr. Jacobson served 16 years with Chesapeake Energy Corporation, before retiring in July 2015. His position at Chesapeake upon retirement was Executive Vice President – Acquisitions & Divestitures. During Doug’s career at Chesapeake, he negotiated and/or managed the consummation of over 8,500 acquisition and divestiture transactions exceeding $70 billion in value in the aggregate. Prior to joining Chesapeake, Doug was employed by Samson Investment Company. He was serving as Senior Vice President, Project Development and Marketing at the time of his departure from Samson and in that capacity, he managed Samson’s acquisition and divestiture efforts. Prior to joining Samson, Doug was employed as an auditor with Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. He has served on various Oklahoma legislative commissions, including the Commission of Oil and Gas Production Practices and the Natural Gas Policy Commission. He is a certified public accountant and graduated from John Brown University with a B.S.B.A. and from the University of Arkansas with a M.S.A.

Mike Kelly, Managing Director and Senior Analyst for Seaport Global Securities LLC, covers more than 30 E&Ps, ranging from the international operator Apache Corp. and Permian-focused Parsley Energy Inc., to gas powerhouse Southwestern Energy Co. Kelly joined SGS in 2015 in its merger with Global Hunter Securities LLC, which he joined in 2011 after some six years on the buy side as an Energy Analyst for Kennedy Capital in St. Louis. He received his MBA from Washington University. His undergraduate degree is from Trinity University in San Antonio, where he majored in Business Administration and minored in Political Science.

Ryan Keys co-founded Triple Crown Resources in April of 2017 with backing from Yorktown, and recently acquired assets in the Midland Basin. He was previously at Jefferies' Energy Investment Banking business unit for 5 years where he was last Senior Vice President. His earlier stops include a service company, a reserves consultancy, and another private equity-backed E&P company. Ryan has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M.

Craig Lande, a managing director of RBC Richardson Barr, has more than 20 years of experience in the U.S. A&D market, involving company research, corporate and asset valuation, and business development. Prior to joining RBC Richardson Barr in 2005, Lande was with asset marketer Waterous & Co. as a vice president and was creator and editor of Quarterly Market Review, a newsletter focusing on upstream A&D valuations and trends. Previously, he was a senior analyst with energy investment-banking firm Cornerstone Ventures LP. He holds a B.S. in Business Management and Marketing from Tulane University.

C. Gordon Lindsey has served as the Vice President of Corporate Development of Talos Energy since May 2018. Previous to being named Vice President, Mr. Lindsey served as Director of Asset Development from February 2017 to April 2018. Prior to joining Talos, Mr. Lindsey was Vice President Exploration/Business Development and a founding member of Gulf Coast Energy Resources where he led a team, focused on three major conventional onshore plays and GOM Shelf.  Mr. Lindsey also served as Managing Director of Acquisitions and Divestitures at LLOG from 2003 to 2010 where his focus was on coordinating and executing asset sales of over $850 million to help facilitate LLOG’s strategic move to the GOM deep-water.  While at Amerada Hess, Mr. Lindsey held several leadership positions.  During his 21 year tenure at Amerada Hess, his roles included but were not limited to; GOM Shelf Business Unit Manager, Onshore South Exploration Manager, Division Geophysicist and Division Geologist. Mr. Lindsey began his career as a geophysicist at Texaco after graduating from the University of Arkansas with a BS in Geology/Geophysics.

Noam Lockshin, a managing director and partner in E&P investor Kimmeridge Energy Management LLC is responsible for management of the firm’s direct investments. Lockshin joined the firm upon its formation as a vice president. He previously worked as a vice president in energy investing for AllianceBernstein and as a senior research associate at Sanford C. Bernstein. At the latter, he worked with Ben Dell on the #1-ranked E&P research team. Lockshin holds a BA with Honors in Mathematics from York University.

Prior to joining EnCap in July 2006, he was the Managing Director and Group Head of JPMorganChase’s Oil & Gas Finance Group. Prior to the merger between JPMorgan and Bank One, Mr. Markham ran Bank One’s Oil & Gas Group. Mr. Markham started his banking career with Republic Bank in 1981 and remained with the bank and its ultimate successor, Bank of America, for 22 years, serving as a Managing Director in its Energy Banking Group.

Mr. Markham has a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Texas Tech University and a Master of Business Administration in Accounting from the University of Houston. He serves on the board of directors of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States and the Dallas Petroleum Club Wildcat Committee. Mr. Markham is an active member of the Dallas and Fort Worth Wildcatters and ADAM Energy Forum, and serves on the board of directors of several EnCap portfolio companies.

Mike McGowan is the Co-Head of XL Catlin’s North American Mergers and Acquisitions Insurance team. He joined XL Catlin in 2016 from Chubb where he served as Vice President for Chubb’s Transactional Risk practice, leading the structuring and underwriting of Representations and Warranties insurance as well as other transaction-based products. He has also previously held positions as an M&A and Private Equity attorney both in-house as Assistant General Counsel at Focus Financial Partners, a middle-market financial services firm, and as an associate at the law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP where he focused primarily on energy transactions. He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his J.D. from Duke University School of Law.

Jay Paul McWilliams, chief executive officer of LOGOS Resources II LLC, co-founded the company in 2016 with a $150-million capital commitment from ArcLight Capital Partners. Since then, McWilliams and the team have built a 270,000-net acre position, producing 90 MMcfe/d, in the San Juan Basin. Prior, McWilliams founded LOGOS Resources LLC in 2012 with a $100-million capital commitment from ArcLight, amassing a 20,000-gross-acre position in the San Juan Basin. Previously, McWilliams was the lead acquisition engineer at LINN Energy and held various engineering positions with Burlington Resources and Resolute Natural Resources. McWilliams received his BS in Chemical Engineering with highest honors from New Mexico Tech and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University where he was a Fuqua Scholar. He serves on the board of the Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) at Duke University, the board of directors of Iron Bridge Resources Inc. and the Petroleum Engineering Industrial Advisory Board at New Mexico Tech.

Sarah is a member of the firm’s Litigation group. Her practice focuses primarily on representing policyholders with respect to insurance coverage matters. Sarah represents policyholders on claims under various lines of insurance and routinely advises policyholders on the insurance aspects of corporate transactions and ways to enhance coverage in connection with policy placements and policy renewals. In addition to her insurance coverage practice, Sarah advises clients on indemnification agreements and contractual claims for indemnity. Sarah’s practice also includes a variety of complex business and commercial litigation matters in both state and federal courts, as well as in domestic and foreign arbitrations. Sarah has represented clients from a variety of industries, including pharmaceutical, life sciences, private equity, banking, energy, real estate, communications, retail, restaurant, hospitality, financial services, and manufacturing companies.

Kyle Mork is President and CEO of Greylock Energy.  He began his career with Halliburton Energy Services before moving to Energy Corporation of America where he served in a variety of operations and management-focused roles, ultimately culminating in the role of CEO.   In fall 2017 he launched Greylock Energy, an oil and natural gas, exploration, production, and midstream company formed with ArcLight Capital Partners.  Mork holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  He is Past-Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences and also serves on the Cornell Engineering College Council. He is active in the Young Presidents’ Organization and Chair of the Mountain State Chapter.  He and his wife Kirsten live in Charleston, West Virginia with their three children.

Dr. Edward Lewis Morse, also known as Ed, serves as Managing Director and Global Head of Commodities Research at Citigroup Inc, Research Division. Dr. Morse served as the Managing Director and Chief Economist of Louis Capital Markets, LP and LCMCommodities, LLC. He joined Louis Capital Markets UK LLP from Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., Research Division, where Dr. Morse served as the Chief Energy Economist and Managing Director since August 10, 2006. He served as Fixed Income Analyst at Barclays PLC, Research Division. He served as an Equity Analyst at Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division. He worked in the United States government at the State Department and later was an Advisor at the United Nations Compensation Commission on Iraq as well as at the United States Departments of State, Energy and Defense and the International Energy Agency on issues related to oil, natural gas and the impact of financial flows on energy prices. Dr. Morse serves as a Member of International Advisory Board of National Bank of Kuwait K.S.C.P. He was Princeton Professor and Author of numerous books and articles on energy, economics and international affairs. His experience includes senior positions in business at Hess Energy Trading Company and Philips Petroleum; publishing as ex - Chief Executive Officer at Energy Intelligence group; government at Head of energy United States Department of State; research at Council of Foreign Relations; and academia at Princeton, Columbia., and John Hopkins Universities. Dr. Morse is widely cited in the media, a contributor to journals such as Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He was the publisher of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and other trade periodicals. Dr. Morse was ranked one of The 36 Best Analysts On Wall Street by Business Insider and number 23 among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012 by Foreign Policy.

Prior to joining Petrie Partners LLC at its founding, Jacob Nagy, partner, was an associate in Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Global Energy & Power Investment Banking Group. Nagy joined the group as part of Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch at year-end 2008. Since beginning his career at Merrill Lynch, Nagy has completed more than 50 merger, joint-venture, divestiture and financing transactions. He received his B.A. in Political Science, cum laude, from Rice University.

Curtis Newstrom serves as President and CEO and has over 28 years of experience, primarily in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. Prior to forming Blue Whale Energy North America in August, 2014, Mr. Newstrom served as Senior Vice President - Business Development for Midstates Petroleum from 2010 to 2014. He was Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Planning for Linn Energy from 2007 to 2010. The majority of Mr. Newstrom’s career was with Burlington Resources, where he held several management positions in acquisitions and divestitures, operations, strategic planning and reservoir and production engineering. He also held management and engineering positions with Hess Corporation and Schlumberger. Mr. Newstrom currently serves on the Board of Directors of Blue Whale Energy North America. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Petroleum Engineering from Marietta College. Mr. Newstrom is an active member of SPE, AAPG, Houston Producers Forum and ADAM Houston.

Pat Oenbring, chairman and chief executive officer of Hawkwood Energy LLC, has more than 40 years of industry experience. He began his career with Conoco Inc., where he spent 22 years in a variety of positions including playing a leadership role in several successful large-scale startup projects. In 1997, he joined Occidental Petroleum Corp. as president and general manager of Occidental Qatar. He became president and general manager of Oxy Permian in 2000 in conjunction with Oxy's acquisition of Altura Energy LP. Oxy Permian was the largest oil producer in Texas and was also the largest business unit in Oxy. Prior to co-founding Hawkwood, Oenbring was vice president, western operations, for Harvest Natural Resources Inc. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas.

Nicholas is a Director at Merrill Corporation; he is responsible for business development and direct sales of DataSite, Merrill’s Virtual Data Room (VDR) solution. With a primary focus on delivering DataSite to corporate deal professionals, Nicholas provides sales and support to leading investment banks, private equity, law firms and corporate officers. Prior to joining Merrill Corporation in 2008, Nicholas spent 2 years at Accenture as part of their Alliance Services organization, where he leveraged Accenture relationships and contacts within client base to drive 3rd party technology sales and facilitate Accenture services opportunities within the Resources – North America operating group. Prior to Accenture and business school, Nicholas was Director of Engineering Systems at Z-tel / Trinsic Communications, managing large-scale infrastructure projects. Nicholas earned his MBA in finance, accounting & marketing from the Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business, and BS in electrical engineering from the Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering.

Jay Salitza joined KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. in 2015 and is currently a Managing Director in the Oil and Gas Investment Banking group based in Houston. Mr. Salitza’s preliminary focus is corporate finance and advisory for both public and private upstream E&P operators.  Throughout his career, he has had opportunities to advise and execute on transactions involving mergers & acquisitions, divestitures, structured transactions and leveraged finance, leveraged buyouts, and both public and private debt and equity capital transactions.  

Prior to joining KeyBanc, Mr. Salitza was employed with both Scotiabank and Bank of America for an aggregate 15 years.  Mr. Salitza holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Finance and Economics from Southern Illinois University where he graduated Cum Laude, and a Master of Business Administration from the Warrington College of Business Administration at University of Florida where he graduated With Honors.

Jeff Sieler is a managing director in the global energy group of Citigroup Investment Bank. Sieler joined Citi as its A&D team's founding member and moved to the investment-banking team to increase technical emphasis across the broader coverage of Citi energy investment-banking. Prior to joining Citi, Sieler was the leader of Marathon Oil Corp.'s reservoir-performance team and champion of its Eagle Ford integrated project team. His 28 years with Shell Oil Co. culminated at the vice president level as manager of the subsurface and well technologies team and as a member of the major's research and development council. Sieler received his M.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Tulane University and B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of North Dakota.

Mark Stoner is a Partner at Bayou City Energy where he oversees investment origination and execution. Prior to joining Bayou City in January of 2015, he spent seven years as the Vice President of Finance of Alta Mesa Holdings, LP, a Houston, Texas based independent exploration and production company. Prior to joining Alta Mesa, Mark worked as a Financial Analyst at Leor Energy. Mark earned his Bachelor’s degree in Business from Southwestern University.

Will Ulrich is the co-founder and co-CEO of Presidio Petroleum LLC. He has over 12 years of energy experience, previously as head of corporate development and strategic planning for Atlas Energy, a family of public and private upstream and midstream companies. Ulrich helped grow the Atlas family of companies to an enterprise value of nearly $10 billion, generating close to $1 billion of EBITDA. During his career, he has directly done more than $20 billion of energy mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and joint ventures. He graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Economics.

Matthew Wiener is the head of the Aon Risk Solutions’ Transaction Liability team for the Southwest region. In this role, Mr. Wiener is responsible for the development and implementation of transactional-based risk solutions, including the deployment of insurance capital for M&A transactions through representations and warranties, litigation, tax and other contingent liabilities insurance, with a specialize focus on energy and power transactions. Prior to joining Aon, Mr. Wiener was an attorney at Vinson & Elkins LLP, where he specialized in corporate finance and securities law matters, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity, public and private securities offerings, divestitures, and general corporate representation. His practice included representation of a variety of public and private companies, as well as private equity funds and investment banks, with a significant focus on the energy sector.

Chuck Yates is a managing partner for the Kayne Anderson Capital Advisor’s energy private equity activities. He is responsible for the origination and execution of private equity transactions in the energy industry.

Prior to joining Kayne Anderson in 2001, Mr. Yates was a senior vice president at Stephens Inc., an integrated merchant and investment bank.

Mr. Yates earned a B.A. in Political Science in 1991 and an M.B.A. in Finance in 1994 from Rice University.