?IPAA speakers: Buddy Clark, a partner at Haynes and Boone law firm, introduced first-panel speakers at IPAA’s 15th annual Private Capital Conference. “I tried to go beyond the printed, biographical material that our panel members provided to us, so I Googled their names.”


According to Clark’s Internet results, Charles Hall, managing director at ING Bank, is also a Nevada Air Force mechanic, has interacted with extraterrestrials and wrote a book about that, Millennium Hospitality.
Also according to Clark’s search, Jeffrey Hewitt, a partner at Energy Special Situations Funds, shares a name with a personage known for the quote, “So much of business is done by the seat of the pants. So much is done by accident.”


And Patrick Hickey, a senior vice president at TCW Asset Management, should not be mistaken for another like-named Hickey with a MySpace.com page. The 28-year-old’s page requires that a button be pushed for further access. Clark said, “Well, my law firm evidently doesn’t allow me to access adult material, as I found out.”

Obama’s team: Also at the IPAA Private Capital Conference, Karen Alderman Harbert, executive vice president and managing director for the Institute for 21st Century Energy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, discussed key energy personnel who will join President-elect Obama’s team. “Carol Browner has been appointed as the White House coordinator for energy and climate policy,” said Harbert. “She’s the former EPA administrator under President Clinton, who argued forcefully for cap-and-trade, and wants to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions through regulation.”


Larry Summers is the incoming director of the National Economic Council. “His bottom line is that we are not going to do anything that is going to kill the economy. He has a good head on his shoulders.”


General Jim Jones, currently Harbert’s supervisor, will leave to be director of the National Security Council. “It’s good that he is moving across the street, because he understands energy and environmental policy and he has been given the ability to make that part of the National Security Council. He’s a retired four-star general, former commander of NATO, former commandant of the Marine Corps, is 6 feet, 6 inches tall, and anybody in any meeting listens to him.”


Steve Chu, the incoming energy secretary, has spent his career looking at alternative energy and biofuels, she said. Ken Salazar will be the incoming secretary of the interior and will oversee all mineral-rights leasing. “He has been against leasing in his home state of Colorado for oil shale and other unconventional sources,” she said.


Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, “has made it very clear that she sees energy security as a principle part of her charge,” said Harbert. “She said that will be a huge part of her diplomat portfolio and she intends to pursue that with great vigor.”

Bottom of the cycle: Oil prices in 2008 experienced their most dramatic year since 1986, posting both a 52-week high and a 52-week low in a span of 165 calendar days, says Allen Brooks, managing director of Houston-based energy investment-banking firm Parks Paton Hoepfl & Brown.


“When crude oil futures prices bottomed out on Christmas Eve, the gap between the low price and a 200-day moving average stood at 70%,” he says. “That exceeded the gap that opened up during the 1986 oil-price collapse.


“This wider gap in 2008 gives us confidence that we have probably seen the bottom for oil prices in this cycle. Some forecasters are suggesting that oil prices could fall into the $20-a-barrel range in 2009, but we chalk that talk up to people trying to attract media attention or crude oil traders talking to their book, suggesting near-term price movements consistent with whether they are long or short crude oil.”

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