The Interview: A Different Future

Mike Stice would need a very large business card, indeed, to list all that he does. He is dean of the Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and holds the college’s Lester A. Day Family Chair. The college includes OU’s programs in petroleum and geological engineering, geology and geophysics, and the Oklahoma Geological Survey. But the former Access Midstream CEO also continues to hold major business roles. He serves on the boards of SandRidge Energy Inc., U.S. Silica Holdings Inc., Mexico’s EIM Capital and, until its recent acquisition by MPLX, MarkWest Energy Partners.

His 35-year career has included senior management roles with ConocoPhillips and Chesapeake Energy, as well as Access. He’s managed multiple infrastructure projects in the U.S. and abroad.

That diverse background of business and academics, at home and abroad—plus active community-service roles in Oklahoma—create a high-level perspective on the future of midstream and the energy business.

Stice took time to visit with Midstream Business to discuss what he sees ahead.

MIDSTREAM You first visited with Midstream Business five years ago. How has midstream changed since then?

STICE Let’s go back seven years or more, to 2008. You saw a downturn that stressed the industry as a whole and created enormous midstream opportunities because you had what I would consider to be small and large independents attempting to monetize their midstream assets so that they could reinvest in upstream. Companies like Chesapeake and Devon [Energy Corp.] were basically setting up independent midstream MLP entities. Even downstream-oriented MLPs were formed, like Phillips 66 [Co.] and Marathon.

It was motivated by a number of factors. One was the need for cash to be put back in the core business—that was the primary factor. But secondarily, it was motivated by the attraction of the MLP structure and what that brought to the equation. Some investors doing MLPs interpreted the structure to be riskless, and of course all you have to do is read the risk-factor disclosures in all the prospectuses to know that that was never the case.

But there is a risk-mitigation type of methodology that goes into creating any MLP, and it left most of the commodity price risk with the upstream customer or partner, depending on what the structure was, and it allowed us to get a clear line of sight to a constant distribution. And the market loved this. There weren’t good returns on bonds. There weren’t really good returns on a number of other investment structures, so MLPs became the darling and attracted an enormous amount of capital.

That sets the stage for 2008—a lot of MLPs were born. You saw three different types: You saw the drop-down model where the parent maintains ownership of the general partner. Those models did very well because they gave some certainty to growth, especially when there was an inventory of drop-down assets. A lot of the majors, Phillips 66 and Marathon, produced that model, as did Chesapeake Midstream.

Then you saw a separate model, I call it the growth model. The MLP was set up in a way that had a very strong customer that was very active in its drilling plans, and you had an arm’s length commercial transaction that defined your relationship—not an ownership. Those did very well. An example of that would be MarkWest. These MLPs did particularly well if they found themselves in a high-volume, highly prolific basin, like the Utica or the Marcellus or Eagle Ford.

And then the third model was kind of a rarity, there were a few of them but not many. Those were the ones where the MLP was more of an acquisition vehicle. It was created to cobble together a variety of different assets and give them structure and then derive a strategy after the fact. You saw Crestwood [Midstream Partners LP] develop, for example, as one of those. And I would say those were more vehicles designed to put together a bunch of non-strategic assets in a manner that benefited the investors but also allowed them to aggregate some scale and get economies of efficiency.

So that was the early stage of the MLP structure. Then you saw a boom period. Everybody—all three models—did very well. The relative pace in the growth model tended to do the best. The drop-down model did OK, actually did very well, but not as well as the growth model. And the MLPs that were cobbling together non-strategic assets, I think they got a good return, but they weren’t quite as sexy.

MIDSTREAM That brings us to the current downturn. What has that brought to the midstream?

STICE Then the downturn occurred in the last 18 months and you saw that the drop-down model was much more resilient to the downward pressures than the growth model. The growth model struggled more because, as drilling backed off, those arm’s-length commercial transactions passed the risk onto the midstream. The drop-down models were a little more resilient because you had EBITDA available in the parent that could be dropped down in lieu of drilling activity and maintain a distribution. So it turned out this was a lower-risk model and therefore fared better in a down cycle.

And then, of course, the last model—the ones that had cobbled together different non-strategic assets—really suffered in this decline period.

Now we find ourselves looking forward, and it’s a difficult time. So the overall market with these low commodity prices, the upstream customer—which is the beginning of all of the opportunity—is really struggling and having difficulty making the cash flow they need to service their own debt.

The consequence to the MLP side of the business is that the people that were counting on activity in the basins in which they operate are now finding themselves with no activity. That means that their committed growth and distributions are in jeopardy. That’s when you started to see huge declines in unit prices across the board.

As I contemplate where we’ve been—the whole thing described in the last five years or so—leads you to a view of the future that’s quite different. The opportunities in the past were the small and large independents monetizing their midstream assets in order to get into greater upstream plays. The opportunity to do that is really not there now. The financial gifts that are associated with that are not there. I think the opportunity in the future is less about partnering with the independent class of upstream operators and more about partnering with the supermajors.

I think the large majors will now see a window of opportunity where they are going to let go, if you will, of the control of some of their midstream assets, even to the point where they might form their own MLPs. Shell has already done that. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we don’t see players as big as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, that don’t have these midstream vehicles today, create them. They have enough infrastructure within their portfolios that they could give meaningful confidence to investors.

Just like the independents were able to do in 2008, these people are going to be able to do the same in 2016 and beyond. I think there is going to be a new opportunity set for midstream investment that is going to come from what might have been perceived as unlikely divestitures from majors.

MIDSTREAM Was the jump to academics from the corporate world a difficult one? What has been unexpected?

STICE I think it’s important to go back to my vision for my life. When I was 24 years old, I wrote a vision statement that said that I would get my master’s degree by the time I was 35, I would get my doctorate by the time I was 50, I would retire by the time I was 55, and I would try to spend the latter years of my career giving back. And my vision was to teach. The doctorate degree was so I would have the credentials to teach at the collegiate level.

It was unexpected to be in administration, to be a dean. That was not a part of the plan, but clearly it came together very well. Every one of those dates I envisioned was late one or two years. I look back at that and find it amazing because I don’t think, when I wrote those dates when I was only 24, that I ever thought that it would actually happen, it was just a vision.

So I find myself exactly where I planned. The transition was not as difficult as many people perceive it to be. There are lots of things that I learned in corporate America, being a CEO of a public company, that are transferrable to this role. Probably that’s more so in the dean role than there would have been just being an instructor here. Take strategic planning—completely transferrable—which I’m engaged in, developing a strategic plan for the college. The people skills of managing faculty and staff in the pursuit of a common vision, that’s very transferrable.

The challenge is, that most people know about, is a state institution operates very differently. There is a lot more involved in order to institute change. There are a lot of forms and bureaucracy that are built into a state institution. This is a highly structured environment where rules and regulations are plentiful.

And so if I were to describe the biggest challenge of adapting, which I think is your question, is the fact that I don’t have the authority to make clear decisions. Even when I see what needs to be done there’s a process that needs to be followed in order to institute the change. I miss the ability to just declare and use the authority of the role of CEO to make the necessary change. But at the same time I must admit that I’ve been able to make the changes that I need to make. It just takes longer.

MIDSTREAM Wall Street hit midstream stocks hard in 2015 even though they, for the most part, did not have the commodity price challenges of upstream producers. What can midstream executives do to differentiate their firms in the minds of investors?

STICE That gets back to the comment I made earlier. If you read any public company prospectus within midstream and you go straight to the risk factors, you will see that all the risk factors were delineated and identified by the respective companies. Many investors ignored them. But the one that got the most attention in 2015, creating the downslide that you’re describing, was the indirect commodity price risk.

It wasn’t that the contracts that were written did not mitigate direct commodity price risk, because they did, but they did not address indirect price risk. In other words, when business activity left, there weren’t always contracts with minimum volume commitments or adjustable rates, things like that. And even if you had those kinds of terms and conditions, they would actually put the producer in further financial peril. So the contract itself would not have served its purpose if the counterparty could not afford to drill as planned.

These kinds of commodity prices, sub-$40 oil, are so serious that the independent producer, the major producer—anybody who has a plan around developing a basin—is going to struggle to make a margin, much less make a return on their debt load and ultimately to their equity investors. These are very serious times for the producer, and the midstream company relies on a healthy counterparty, a healthy customer. And so the advice is, pay attention to that indirect commodity price risk and make sure that the quality of the customer behind the midstream company you’re interested in is one that’s bankable.

You know, the concentration risk that many midstream companies have—in other words a company finds itself in one basin with one producer customer—is a problem in a downsized market like this. You want to diversify your portfolio, you want to have many basins, you want to have many producer customers. That is the way you differentiate yourself as a midstream CEO in today’s market.

MIDSTREAM What do producers need from midstream operators that they’re not getting?

STICE The “not getting” part makes me hesitate. Most midstream companies are giving reliable service, very high run times, and producers desperately need that. That’s probably their No. 1 requirement. They’re also giving customers safety and environmental performance so they’re not creating obstacles for the producer when it comes to the social obstacles associated with the development of a field.

In regard to what producers are not getting, I would say that the midstream companies have not developed themselves in a way that allows them to help in a downcycle. A public-company MLP has very little flexibility to assist a struggling producer because it, too, has commitments to public investors.

In other words, “I’m Mr. Producer, I’m going to drill 10 wells and I’d like you to do that business for me for 30 cents an Mcf.” Once that commitment is made, it’s public. Both the producer and midstream company declare that to the market and the market rewards you for that predictable cash flow stream. When the market downturns and now all of a sudden the producer doesn’t drill those wells, the midstream structure is built in such a way that the midstream service provider can’t give relief to the producer when he needs relief. They’re already obligated to the Street.

It’s a difficult structure with very little wiggle room. The MLP works well in both normal circumstances and in up markets. Frankly, it struggles when plans change enormously because it is a structure designed to deliver to its investors constant and predictable growth—whatever that growth guidance is, the midstream MLP must deliver on it. If it’s single digit or mid-teens, your investors are counting on it. And when the producers change their plans, there’s very little flexibility to recover. Some thought needs to be given to future midstream companies to have the flexibility to offer relief in a downside commodity market, which may mean projecting more moderate growth expectations that would factor in a potential downcycle.

MIDSTREAM Sometimes we overlook the downstream side of the buildout. What will the development of a major LNG export business, new petrochemical capacity and a restart of the U.S. fertilizer business mean to the midstream?

STICE You are exactly right. When you think about the offtake—most of the MLPs we discussed are gathering or processing MLPs—they truly are midstream. They lie between the producer and this downstream infrastructure you talk about.

LNG export is something that I’ve believed in for a long time. It’s even more relevant today. Gas prices are down. There is a global market for LNG. I think many people are overstating what the benefit is going to be, but clearly it will have a benefit to U.S. producers. We’ll be able to export to the European market, which is obviously trading at a much higher price per MMBtu, as is the Asian market.

What’s going to happen, however, is that you’re going to see a normalization of prices across the globe that will more approximate the transportation differentials. That’s usually what happens when you connect markets. But it’s wrong for people in the U.S. to underestimate the competitiveness of that market. The U.S. is still the largest demand center for natural gas in the world. The entire global market for LNG is only one-third the size of the U.S. market for natural gas.

That is why your point about ammonia plants being built, petrochemical plants being built here in the U.S. is important. That downstream infrastructure is going to support the continued development of this abundant shale resource in North America.

LNG exports will be a fine-tuning knob, if you will, for demand, as we’ll allow surplus gas to find its way into the global market. But the real demand for natural gas—the sustainable demand—is going to come from things like the domestic petrochemical and domestic ammonia markets.

MIDSTREAM Mexico’s energy business has undergone a sea change in the last two years. What midstream opportunities do you see there as a result?

STICE Obviously you can see that I’m betting on Mexico with my own time. I really believe that Mexico is a jewel, and I think it’s time has come. There is an enormous amount of opportunities in the energy side of the business.

Pemex has been the national oil company, and it has its hands full with its own offshore development. The government is making the necessary cultural, as well as policy, changes to invite foreign capital to the onshore side of the business. Within the onshore side of the business there are not only opportunities for upstream development but there are midstream opportunities as well—such as major interstate transportation pipeline opportunities. Mexico is obviously our neighbor, and it’s important that we have a relationship with Mexico that’s far better than what it has been in the past.

You hear about all the issues along the border and immigration, and yet we do not seem to understand that we need to increase our economic ties rather than sever them. To me the solution is less about a wall and more about achieving economic equality in the form of GDP per capita.

I’m excited about Mexico for three reasons. One is policy, I believe Mexico is blessed with a lot of the similar resources that we have but they haven’t been capitalized well enough to exploit them. I think there’s a recognition of that at the highest levels in Mexico, and I think you’re seeing the kinds of policy changes that are going to create a boom, frankly, all across the value chain by openly inviting foreign capital to participate. Second, we’re on a very fast pace to see foreign capital go into the country. Timing has always been an issue here. But where I would have said just last year that it will be five or 10 years away before we can see a true mindset change, I have been pleased to see it happen already. Finally, there appears to be a willingness to accept foreign operators bringing much-needed technology and know-how into the country.

MIDSTREAM Given Mexico’s constitutional and administrative changes, what is the biggest lingering challenge to energy development there?

STICE The only thing that I believe is holding Mexico back today is the perception of safety—people being able to go in there and operate in a way that employees are safe. Once that issue is clearly out of the way then I think you’re going to see significant investment in Mexico and I think you’re going to see opportunity for North American operators, Canadian operators, too, to go into Mexico and improve upon what the existing infrastructure looks like.

MIDSTREAM Private equity continues to be attracted to the midstream. Where is the money coming from and why are investors seeking out the midstream, given the broader challenges of the energy business now?

STICE If you stand back and look at the energy market from a private equity standpoint, you realize that the global market is flush with cash. That’s the thing that makes today very different from 2008. In 2008, money appeared to be unavailable, or uninterested in supporting some of the active players in the industry. Today you have—I just came back from New York City—billions of dollars seeking opportunity in the industry. And there doesn’t appear to be that much fear. There appear to be people just looking for the right entry point, but also looking for the right opportunity to establish a predictable growth stream of cash flows.

There were a number of transactions that were announced in late 2015. It’s clear—notice in those transactions that the sales prices aren’t quite bargains yet—but that doesn’t mean these were not good entry points. The market is saying that $35 oil is not sustainable. It is pricing things at a much higher level, maybe $55 or $60.

But I think it’s really important to recognize that as this capital sits, penned up waiting for an opportunity, it’s just a matter of time before that capital enters the market—and there will be a rebound.

When that capital gets the signal that now is the time to enter, now is the time to do a deal, then I think you’ll see almost a cliff rebound. I think that’s going to be exciting to watch. Right now, there are too many questions about commodity prices, there’s too much overhang in supply, so people clearly are not getting a clear signal yet.

MIDSTREAM Do you see M&A activity remaining brisk this year?

STICE Yes, I do. I think it’s going to be driven by two things. [The first is] what I call bad M&A, which is failed companies needing white knights to come in and buy out the remaining assets prior to bankruptcy. Then I see deals—some parties having gone through bankruptcy—going through restructuring, then there will be M&A activity on the back end of that. So, I think M&A is going to be quite robust as it usually is on the heels of a downcycle like this.

MIDSTREAM There is growing opposition among environmentalists to the midstream buildout, Keystone XL being the most visible. How can the industry better tell its story to the public to offset that opposition?

STICE That’s a great question. There is growing environmentalist opposition, I definitely see this. I think it’s important to recognize, though, that the pipeline industry’s actual operations have not failed. Pipelines continue to be incredibly safe, although there are exceptions, including catastrophic events that could have been prevented. I think the industry has to eliminate those events entirely. That’s one thing that the midstream industry must continue to focus on. I think it has done a great job there but obviously any one incident is one too many.

I think the other thing the midstream industry must do is to recognize that we don’t live in a world of science-based regulation. We live in a world of politicized regulation—and that it is important that you give your elected officials the ammunition they need to defend themselves from what I consider to be rhetoric.

When you consider the decision on Keystone XL, I would argue the decision on that pipeline was largely political.

It really had nothing to do with the science. There’s no question that that pipeline could be laid safely through the various states and counties. There’s absolutely no argument there. What little argument there was, opponents used as a means to defeat the pipeline for their own political agenda.

Granted, I’m from the industry so I’m biased. I think it’s ridiculous that Keystone XL has not been approved. I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to build infrastructure and create connectivity. That clearly benefits the downstream consumers of all nations—and not only does it help with the price of energy, it also helps in the reliability of energy.

So it’s a difficult conversation for me to have when I sit down with a politician who opposes additional pipeline infrastructure. I just find that nonsensical.

MIDSTREAM Canada has seen major political changes in Alberta and its federal government. How will these impact that nation’s energy business—particularly in its relationship with the U.S.?

STICE I have an interesting perspective on that. I view Canada and Australia to be sisters in some ways.

I lived in Australia about the same time the more liberal party took over there. Australia, the U.K., Canada—the parliamentary setup—is unique in its own way. I think people are overstating and are overly concerned about the Liberal Party taking over in Canada. Obviously Prime Minister Trudeau has been very clear about his expectations around regulation—but I haven’t heard anything from the Liberal Party that I, as an industry participant, wouldn’t be willing to comply with.

Everybody here, industry or non-industry participants, wants to be a good steward of the environment. Everybody here wants to make sure indigenous people have had their say. Granted, the process takes longer, it took a long time for me to build a pipeline in Australia, but all those things can be dealt with properly in due process.

I’m not of the view that the change in party and politics is going to be as big a negative as some predict. It is going to make things take longer, but I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised that Trudeau and the current Parliament will have a balanced perspective around economic growth, they’re just going to demand the industry do the right thing. And ironically, in many cases the industry—in Canada in particular—has been doing the right thing. So there clearly will be more expectations, but I don’t think those expectations will be deal stoppers.

MIDSTREAM In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge to the midstream in 2016?

STICE I think the biggest challenge is the health of the upstream customer, identifying the right kinds of counterparties in the right contractual structures that allow the upstream customer to not only survive but thrive. Then, midstream can make a predictable return and the upstream customer can deliver on its development plans. I think that’s key.

MIDSTREAM What should midstream executives be doing now to ready their businesses for the future?

STICE Now is the time to shore up your balance sheet, create flexibility in your contractual structures by reconciling the contractual commitments that we made in the past with the updated development plans that our upstream customers have now. Instead of guiding the market to achieve the unbridled growth expectations of our producer customers, we should add some judgment and make sure that we can meet those predictable growth and cash flow figures in difficult times, too.

I think to be conservative in your balance sheet would be an understatement right now. I think leverage, which got us in trouble in 2008 when people got their leverage up to 70% or more, and although we came back after ’08 in the 50% range,

I feel we need to target leverage in the 35% to 40% range in the future. I think midstream companies need to rely less on leverage and more on the cash flows from operations to produce heir predictable growth story. That’s hard because debt funding is so readily available—and cheap.

MIDSTREAM How will the energy business be different five and 10 years from now?

STICE I’d be a rich man if I knew that! I don’t think you can predict. I think all you can do is take your qualifications and capabilities into the marketplace and react. I do have a lot of friends who made money placing bets, if you will, predicting what the next trend would be, and there’s no doubt if you’re good enough to do that there’s quite a nice return waiting for you.

That really hasn’t been the way I have been able to make my money. The way I’ve been able to make money is the old-fashioned way—where you either acquire or build something in service to a customer. The customer is satisfied with your service, continues to do business with you. You make a reasonable return. And you help that customer fulfill its shareholders’ needs. It’s harder work, it’s slower work, but it’s much more rewarding than simply placing a bet.

You saw a lot of companies that predicted deregulation and they got involved buying regulated assets and then saw the upside return when deregulation ultimately occurred. If you can predict that kind of change, that’s great. I’ve not been one that has done that very well. And honestly, in some cases those who placed large bets were brilliant, but in some cases they were simply lucky. If I knew what the next five- or 10-year shift was going to look like, obviously I would invest in it. But I am not one who can predict.

I will tell you that I think commodity prices are not sustainable at the sub-$40 level and they’ll return to something more modest. I don’t believe $120 oil will ever be back. It just doesn’t seem possible in my lifetime.

But I oftentimes remind people that in 2003, when I was on the National Petroleum Council, we collectively wrote to the president in a document that the oil and gas business in the United States was over, there was no more gas; that was just 13 years ago. We were convinced that we didn’t have any more gas, and I believed so much in that conclusion that I changed my career.

MIDSTREAM What happened?

STICE I was a domestic midstream E&P player at ConocoPhillips, and I decided that I would go and join the international LNG business. I participated in building what was at the time the largest LNG facility, in Qatar, a 7.8 million tonnes per annum LNG facility with the understanding that the LNG produced would come to the United States to keep the lights on here.

But you know, by the time I got over there and got the project contracted and before it even came out of the ground—before its startup—the independent oil and gas industry had created the shale boom right here in the U.S. That’s what made me choose to come back and participate. I lived in Doha for six years and then came back home to Norman, Okla., to join the independent oil and gas shale boom. Wow! Can you imagine? Those few short years, 2003 to 2008, that’s five years, the entire complexion of the industry changed. You ask me to predict what the next five years will bring? Obviously I’m not very good at predicting, as you can see.

I think what’s interesting about where we are today is the technology—horizontal drilling technology, now the add-on that includes multiple-lateral technology, the enhanced fracking technology and the knowledge that we’re gaining in our research to understand fluid flow through nanodarcy permeabilities—we are actually getting smarter every day on how we can improve our recovery factors. We are learning every day on how to access more resources. We’re no longer looking for traps, as you know. We’re going straight to the source rock, where the oil and gas was made, and so once we develop a better understand of the fluid flow in these environments, we can apply it across a broad range of plays. We’ve been very successful creating the oversupply that has driven oil prices to new lows.

I think now we have to turn our attention to some of the obstacles that are even more important, ones that we must understand better, whether it be seismic issues related with produced water disposal, or the increased rate of carbon releases to the atmosphere associated with the burning of fossil fuels—the latter was obviously front and center during the recent Paris conference. We need to understand these key issues and develop plans for a long-term solution, not simply participate as a continuing part of the problem—as I think we have been.

In this country, we have outperformed every part of the Kyoto Protocol by converting from coal to natural gas with significant reductions in our carbon dioxide footprint.

We should be excited about that, excited that we’ve done that without abandoning fossil fuels. We’ve done that by embracing the lower emissions content of a natural gas-burning economy vs. a coal-burning economy.

MIDSTREAM What can private business do to better support colleges and universities?

STICE Obviously, the University of Oklahoma relies on industry funding, on the funding of generous donors and funding of the state. The cost of higher education continues to go up, frankly, at alarming rates. It is a function of the cost of bricks and mortar. If you want to build a building with new labs, etc., it is enormously more expensive today than it was before. The actual cost of the education—what I mean by that, the soft side, the faculty, the staff, the people who actually touch the lives of the young students that attend here—that price has not gone up as much. So we rely oftentimes on donors to help us with faculty recruitment so that we’re paying for the best and we’re attracting and retaining the best faculty possible.

We need very specific labs to pursue our research interests. We need help in making sure that the funding side of the equation from industry and donors continues in order for us to offer the quality education that we do today.

One of the things that the industry has been really good about here at the University of Oklahoma, in addition to being there for us from a funding standpoint, is spending time with us in developing job opportunities for our graduates. But more importantly, developing research concepts—things that we can go to work on in assisting them with their problems, but also assisting us in the education of students. We are all about research, teaching and service. Those are the three pillars of any university institution, and we feel like we do that in a very collaborative way with industry.

MIDSTREAM What advice would you give a college student interested in the energy business today?

STICE Stay the course! I get that a lot: “Gosh! Would you get into petroleum engineering today?” And the answer is yes. There is an enormous resource yet untapped here in North America. There is an enormous global resource. My career—the most rewarding part about my career—has been less about the actual development of a project or doing it. It’s been the richness of the interpersonal experience, and I have relationships with people from all religions, all countries. You know, I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to live and work all over the world.

There are very few people who have been given the gift of living in Asia, living in the Middle East, living in Europe, living in places where others might not ever get the opportunity. The gift that I speak of is one of understanding of how similar we all are. The global aspect of our field—the energy industry—is something that is going to be here for a very long time. And if you embrace that opportunity, it makes you much wiser as you see first-hand how different cultures can come together over common economic interests. I believe this expands as the main vehicle to achieve world peace—I believe world peace comes from all those intertwined economic connections.

I love the fact that I have friends in almost every country. I love the fact that people come together when they are seeking common opportunities, and that’s really something that I like to teach. I teach leadership here at the college. You know, it’s less about the latest-and-greatest technology in petroleum engineering. It’s more about how are you developing interpersonal relationships with different religions, with different people from different backgrounds and understanding and enjoying, frankly, the richness of that diverse experience?

MIDSTREAM Leadership seems to be important to you, both for the individual and the industry.

STICE It is a personal aim, I have fallen in love with the subject. And when I refer to leadership, I’m referring to the ability to gather followers toward a noble end. I think that, frankly, the industry—although criticized by many—is full of incredibly outstanding leaders. I feel so blessed to have had the mentors I have had. And now, when I get broader exposure to other industries, I am even more impressed with the energy industry where I have spent the last 30 years.

It amazes me that the politicians and the media have a tendency to characterize the energy industry in such negative terms when I can tell you firsthand that the men and women of this industry that I have worked with are as noble and as respected as anybody I have seen.

I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that we teach these attributes to young people, our future leaders. Whether it be servant leadership or authenticity, trying to make sure that there’s an understanding of our higher calling. Our higher calling can be the environment, our higher calling can be the communities in which we work, or a higher calling to higher education, to make sure that we don’t make repeat mistakes because we failed to teach our future leaders.

That’s where my passion lies. My passion lies in somehow gaining the respect of the broader public, getting people to recognize that the energy industry is producing a very necessary product, one which benefits the entire world, and that we’re doing that in the most productive and the most environmentally friendly way known to man.