Despite heavy rains, more than 300 guests gathered at the Houstonian Hotel on Feb. 23 for HBJ’s Conversation with Houston’s Energy Leaders breakfast. The heavy rain served as a metaphor for the current state of the oil industry, and energy leaders offered their take on how to weather the storm for the rest of 2016.
The three panelists approached the current energy market with three different perspectives. Maynard Holt, co-president and co-head of investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., is bullish on the market over the next year, saying that oil could move to between $42 and $50 a barrel, which could open the market to a flurry of activity.
“We’ll be sitting here not too long from now saying, ‘Wow, that hurt, but it’s over and look at all the good things that are happening,'” Holt told the crowd.
And Ron Wagnon, president of Greenwell Energy Solutions, argued that the energy downturn will be a positive for the market in the long run and that it actually needed to happen. His company has been acquisition heavy over the past few years and isn’t shying away from a deal this year either.
“There’s a lot of opportunity out there,” Wagnon said. “The challenge in today’s market is creating a value for the businesses and trying to find flexibility — without access to cash — to do equity trades to bring businesses in the portfolio.”
One of the significant issues with today’s oil downturn is the difference in fortune between the upstream and downstream portions of the industry, Ken Medlock, senior director of the center for energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said. For those in upstream, the downturn has hit hard, however, the downstream market is doing well if not thriving. Regardless, the Bayou City will still continue to grow economically.
“Houston will weather this storm. The economy will continue to evolve, the energy space will continue to evolve, and Houston will be at the center of that,” Medlock said. “There’s been a lot of interest — particularly from the press — whether or not the transformation of the energy sector will make Houston obsolete, and I would say no, there’s no way that’s going to happen.”
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