Since its launch during the boom of 1981, through the lingering gas bubble of the 1980s, to today's boom, Oil and Gas Investor has connected the E&P and financial worlds for 25 years. The oil and gas business was thriving when Oil and Gas Investor was launched in August 1981. Investors were flocking to the white-hot Denver penny-stock market (which no longer exists), and to public drilling and income partnerships, even rig-construction partnerships that eventually went public. The U.S. rig count had averaged about 3,500 year-to-date. Little did anyone suspect that a decade-long downside was looming. Publisher and owner Donald R. Hart was a well-known member of Denver's booming oil scene at the time. His Hart Publications Inc. was publishing several regional oil and gas magazines and petroleum directories, including Western Oil Reporter, a 20-year mainstay in the region. "Basically, I recognized there was a real need for the oil industry to communicate with the financial community," recalls Hart. "So on a flight to Houston, I sketched in my notebook an idea of what Oil and Gas Investor should be. I saw an opportunity to focus in a high-level way on the people in both the oil companies and on the financial end. The other publications in the industry at that time were so nuts-and-bolts, only about technology." In a way, the idea for this specialized magazine originated at King Resources, a Denver independent producer for whom Investor photo editor Lowell Georgia and some other early Hart employees worked, Hart says. The company, a leader in investor-relations communications, had a highly illustrated IR publication that caught Hart's eye. "It took quite a while for us to plan before Investor really happened. We hired a San Francisco design firm to design that first issue. Then our art director, Marc Conly, took it from there. Marc did a phenomenal job." Conly, based in Denver, still designs the magazine to this day-and has in fact produced every single issue for 25 years, a remarkable record in publishing. He recalls first hearing about Investor in early 1981, while talking to Don Hart in brother Bob Hart's kitchen during an informal gathering of Hart Publications' staff. "I'd been freelancing for Don for a couple of years, while teaching at an art school in Denver. Don mentioned his idea of a 'National Geographic for the oil and gas industry,' something subscribers would be proud to display on a coffee table-and that he even had a National Geographic photographer lined up to be photo editor [Georgia]. "I got involved in the process of reviewing the early stages of design, and when it came time to produce the first issue, Don asked me to come aboard full time as art director. "Before Investor, the symbol of the oil patch was the loud-talking wildcatter wearing a Rolex, a white Stetson, and muddy cowboy boots-and I met a few of those good ol' boys. But the image of the industry and of the people within it has changed, and I like to think Investor has contributed positively to that change of perception." A key factor helping change perceptions was the photography, which made the oil patch come alive, especially to readers on Wall Street who may never have visited a drilling location in Wyoming or a platform in the Gulf of Mexico. "Obviously the photo side was going to be very important," Hart says. "Lowell tells a story with his photos-he understands the story being told and does not just shoot 'pretty pictures' as some others might do." The first cover story featured the Williston Basin. Subsequent early covers included the Austin Chalk of central Texas, the Overthrust Belt in southwestern Wyoming, Louisiana's Tuscaloosa Trend and the Anadarko Basin of Oklahoma. This unique new magazine was taking its readers-E&P executives and investors-to every corner of the oil patch. The content was meant to be instructive and in-depth, but the casual and sometimes irreverent tone adopted by the magazine was the mark of its first editor, Ronald Cooper, who came to Hart from The Wall Street Journal. The concept that each cover story would emphasize a hot basin or play came from another of Hart's magazines, Western Oil Reporter, which every month focused on telling the story of drilling activity in a particular Rocky Mountain area. The well activity highlights section of Western Oil Reporter was so popular, Hart extended that idea to Investor as well. As time went on, the editors recognized that cover stories ought to focus as well on the energy finance community in Manhattan, Houston and Calgary. What challenges did the new magazine face? "Well, with excellent foresight, we started Investor less than a year before the industry went into the tank," says Hart with the hearty laugh for which he is known. "So, most of the challenges were of a financial nature." Forming Investor was "one of those big decisions where you take a big, deep breath. But it was the right thing to do," recalls Tony Banham of Simmons & Co. International, and a Hart board member at the time. The vice chairman of the Houston energy investment-banking firm met Don Hart in Denver in the late 1970s when he dropped by, seeking one of Hart's four-color wall maps of the Rocky Mountain region. "I called on Don periodically after that because he was so obviously in touch with all the oil-service companies there. "Then he asked me if I would join the board of Hart, which he was recapitalizing at the time, so I did. That was in 1979 or 1980. Simmons & Company has maintained a relationship with Hart and Investor ever since, and it's been a resource for us." Photo editor Lowell Georgia was there at the beginning of Investor, as a co-founder, and has shot every cover story for 25 years, but three, another remarkable achievement for the magazine's tight-knit staff. He recalls, "We set it up like an old drilling deal: we each had an eighth. Don, his wife Jane and his brother Bob had majority control, but the first editor, Ron Cooper, had an eighth and I had an eighth." The magazine was part of a family-owned business. One writer recalls the time when the paychecks were still in Don Hart's briefcase when he went out of town-so employees had to wait a few days longer to be paid that month. In 1981, when Investor was born, a young landman named Rich Eichler was working leases for Tenneco in Plentywood, Montana. Coincidentally, he joined the Investor masthead in 1986, as the advertising sales manager. Soon thereafter, he became publisher, and today he is chief executive officer of Hart Energy Publishing LP. When Hart launched Investor in 1981, it explained the oil business to private investors, along with cataloging the dozens of public drilling and income funds. But change was in store. "When the [partnership tax shelter] laws changed in 1986, we began to lose all of those doctors and dentists as subscribers," recalls Eichler. "Don, myself and marketing director Donna Furman had to figure out a way to preserve the publication and change direction without going out of business. Who doesn't remember 1986?" That's when Investor evolved and became the must-read publication for the top echelon of the E&P industry, focused less on private investor needs and more on business opportunities for E&P executives and institutional investors. Says Eichler, "We brought in Wall Street as a big component of the readership in 1988 and began to develop an advertising strategy for the investment banks to reach their oil industry clientele, where they had previously only placed ads in The Wall Street Journal." The first outside investors came to Hart Publications in 1987, and Dillon Read of New York did a private placement for the company. Legendary Denver oilman and investor Cortlandt Dietler, who became Hart board chairman in the mid-1980s, had introduced Don Hart to George Wiegers, head of investment banking at Dillon Read. "Investor was always Don's burning desire," Dietler says. "We formed the board so Don would have someone to talk to about business, and we threw some money into the pot. But Don was very aware of what he wanted to achieve. I would compliment everybody who has stayed hitched to the wagon and made it go." Eichler says, "Talk about a small world...at that time, George Wiegers took a seat on the Hart board and was instrumental in convincing his Wall Street buddies that Investor was the place to be seen." Fast forward to spring 2004, when the same Wiegers, now principal of Wiegers Capital Management in Denver, along with Bob Israel, a partner with New York M&A and investment advisory firm Compass Advisers LLP, became the lead investors in the management-led buyout of Hart Publications (renamed Hart Energy Publishing LP). "If you liked it once, you'll love it twice," quips Wiegers, now chairman of the Hart board. "We were very happy with our first investment in Hart and that's what motivated us. It was easy to reassemble [some investors] in 2004." Eichler says, "Investor really appreciates the loyalty of our many advertisers-past and present." Robin French of French Petroleum in Oklahoma City ran the same ad in every issue for nearly six years in the 1980s. "I recall asking him one day why he ran his ad with us and he simply replied that as a result of being seen or mentioned in Oil and Gas Investor, he had sold a big deal and that he was going to always have his name associated with the magazine via advertising." Indeed, subscribers tell the editors that they have located business partners, identified new capital sources and explored E&P ideas through the pages of Investor-exactly what the magazine hopes to do. In 1991, Don Hart sold Investor and Hart Publications to Phillips Publishing International in Potomac, Maryland, and he retired to pursue his ranching and fishing businesses in Colorado. In early 1995, Hart Publications relocated to Houston, the center of the energy industry. Since that time, it has grown more rapidly as it built on new relationships with E&P companies, bankers, other financial sources and investors. In 2000 Hart Publications was sold to Chemical Week Associates in New York, and remained based in Houston. In early 2004, Eichler engineered a management-led buyout to form the present Hart Energy Publishing LP, with Wiegers as chairman. But through these ownership changes, the magazine has retained its vision, remained true to its editorial mission and continued to grow. "I think Don Hart was a true visionary with this publication," says Eichler. "It is as unique a magazine today as it was 25 years ago. Readers constantly tell me that they have every copy of the magazine. We created a new culture for private oil and gas companies to seek partners, sell or buy deals, and present a strong, positive image to the market before they went public."

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