“If You Capitalize It, They Will Come” LIVE COBT with the Houston Energy Transition Initiative

This week we had the pleasure of co-hosting a panel and live town hall style discussion with our good friends from Vinson & Elkins featuring the recent work of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (or “HETI”). It was exciting to bring the community together and have a live, studio audience to discuss the opportunities and challenges for Houston to serve as the capital of the energy transition. We had the honor of hosting Bobby Tudor, my former partner, CEO of Artemis Energy Partners, and previous Chair of the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP), Jane Stricker, Executive Director of HETI and Sarah Morgan, Co-Head of M&A and Capital Markets at Vinson & Elkins. While it was a Houston-focused discussion, the conversation more broadly focused on the role of classic energy producers and industrial users in the changes to come, and most certainly the things every energy and industrial community can focus on in preparing for the energy future.

The catalyst to our discussion was a report that the Greater Houston Partnership released late last year, “Perspective on The Energy Transition Capital of The World: Houston’s Opportunity to Win by Catalyzing Capital Formation” (the report is linked here). Bobby laid the groundwork for our discussion with background on the GHP and the formation of HETI, and from there we touched on Houston’s ecosystem around the energy transition, the concentration of energy capital in the city and the financial community’s critical involvement going forward, getting solid and interlocking contracts completed and how that will help get more money to work, and working with non-traditional financing structures to facilitate new technologies. We also discussed the role for Houston’s traditional oil and gas companies, noting that the biggest investment dollars on energy transition have been coming from the incumbent energy industry, HETI’s partnerships with local and state universities and the focus on developing talent and the workforce broadly, the thorny permitting process and how “primacy” will be critical for maintaining a competitive advantage and simply getting things done, and more. Bobby summed it up well by saying “we are the laboratory for the energy transition” given the unique combination of Houston’s infrastructure, it's industrial base, it's local energy and related companies, it’s engineering talent and overall workforce, its pro-business attitude, physical location, and nearby geology for CCUS.

At some level, this episode was all about what Houston looks like in 10 years. And forgive us for saying so, but what Houston does and how it adapts will be pivotal to how the nation as a whole and certainly the oil and gas industry adapts. We can’t thank the team enough for a great discussion!

Thank you again to our friends at Vinson & Elkins for co-hosting and to the great crowd who turned out and asked some excellent questions. We hope you enjoy this Special Edition COBT!