HOUSTON—After nearly three decades positioning itself as the ultimate venue for buying, selling and trading of oil and gas prospects, NAPE is diversifying its portfolio.

At its 2021 Summit, NAPE debuted the Renewable Energy Pavilion, which included a dedicated space on the expo floor and on its virtual NAPE Network for both the traditional oil and gas community and those focused in renewables to discuss sustainable energy prospects.

“With the addition of the renewable energy sources to our oil and gas offerings,” NAPE Vice President Le’Ann Callihan said at the kickoff of the conference on Aug. 18, “NAPE will be the ultimate venue for energy deals—both traditional and new century—as we expand our scope to reach and become a broad and innovative energy conference.”

Alongside the announcement of its launch, NAPE noted that the intention of the renewable energy pavilion is not to disrupt the oil and gas community and polarize the show. Instead, the goal is to bring players from all energy sources together to do business, create jobs and spark the economy during tough times, which Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner pointed out was how NAPE got its start to begin with when it was founded in 1993.

“Adapting to change is what NAPE is all about,” Turner said at the opening of the NAPE Renewable Energy Pavilion at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston on Aug. 19. “Twenty-eight years ago, you acted during a downturn in the economy to help jumpstart your industry by creating NAPE.”

“Your goal, in the beginning, was to bring all the players together to share innovative ideas, network and make deals happen,” he continued. “That hasn’t changed in 2021 and now more than ever we need to bring energy professionals together and I want to thank NAPE for continuing to provide the platform to do just that.”

In addition to the launch of the renewables pavilion, this year’s NAPE Summit, held Aug. 18-20, marked the first in-person event for the conference since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Including both in-person and online, this year’s event attracted more than 4,000 attendees, 340 exhibiting companies and over 260 prospects, according to NAPE. Participants included representatives from the renewable energy sector plus the traditional NAPE crowd—major to independent E&Ps as well as service and capital providers.

“I want to emphasize that we are not abandoning our roots and value that we place on oil and gas prospects,” Callihan added in her remarks. “Our prospect generators are the cornerstone of NAPE and we’re hopeful that our expansion of the NAPE marketplace will be valuable to all attendees.”

Some in the oil and gas space, however, have already started to venture into renewables.

LandGate, an exhibitor at the NAPE 2021 Summit, started marketing renewable opportunities for sale on its website last year, according to Eric Thompson, vice president of business development for the Denver-based firm.

“That’s been one of our biggest areas of growth for us,” Thompson told Hart Energy on the NAPE show floor. “Obviously, we still do oil and gas, the world still needs oil and gas, but renewables is kind of this new horizon for a lot of folks and there’s a lot of capital on the renewables side of things.”

In 2016, LandGate was founded by CEO Yoann Hispa and President Craig Kaiser to provide information, data solutions and an online marketplace for oil and gas minerals and royalties. Though, from the beginning, Thompson said incorporating renewables into the firm’s platform was always part of the plan—the pandemic just sped things up.

Currently, LandGate provides services for U.S. commercial land resources covering solar, wind, carbon, oil and gas, minerals and water. Since the expansion, one of the firm’s main new clients, Thompson said, are oil and gas companies transitioning into renewables.

“For the most part,” he said, “most of the oil and gas companies that are here, they have at least thought about renewables at some point.”

The transition, for both LandGate and its customers, has been smooth, he added due to the existing overlap between the oil and gas minerals business and the renewables market.

“It’s not difficult to buy a royalty stream, like a solar farm, that is getting paid every month,” he explained. “It’s actually very simple to evaluate. So, for a typical royalty/mineral buyer, they can easily evaluate those deals with their current business structure. They don’t have to change anything.”

In his closing remarks, Turner noted that when it comes to this transition in energy, Houston is the right place to provide a one-stop marketplace, such as NAPE, to bring all the players together and embrace this new energy landscape.

“While this city has been the longtime home of oil and gas—and, I might add, still is,” he said, “Houston is also a brave, new world for the future of the energy industry and energy transition.”

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