Global Business Conference

SPEAKER BIOS

Michael A. Wichterich has served as the chair of Chesapeake's board of directors since February 2021 and as the company's interim chief executive officer since April 2021. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Three Rivers Operating Company LLC, a private exploration and production company with a focus in the Permian Basin. Prior to founding Three Rivers Operating, Wichterich served as the chief financial officer of Texas American Resources, New Braunfels Utilities and Mariner Energy. Additionally, he began his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers in its energy auditing practices. Wichterich also serves as a board member of Grizzly Energy, Bruin E&P Operating, and Extraction Oil and Gas. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas.

Gordon Pennoyer serves as managing partner at DrivePath Advisors, a boutique financial communications firm that specializes in guiding companies through high-stakes reputational challenges and transformative events.

Over the course of his career, Pennoyer has developed and executed comprehensive communications programs across a wide range of complex and sensitive issues including Chapter 11 restructurings, high-profile litigation, mergers and acquisitions, activist investors and proxy fights and a variety of public policy matters.

Prior to co-founding DrivePath Advisors, he directed the communications team at Chesapeake Energy Corp. for nearly ten years. In that role, he helped the company navigate two CEO transitions, one of the largest Chapter 11 restructurings in recent history, a $4 billion merger, over $15 billion of divestitures and asset spin-offs, and multiple high-profile proxy fights, litigation and operating incidents. In addition, he led Chesapeake’s ESG reporting and related stakeholder engagement efforts.

While at Chesapeake, he also served as the chair of the American Petroleum Institute’s Communications Committee, where he helped develop the industry’s response to climate change. Additionally, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Oklahoma Energy Resource Board by the Oklahoma Senate Pro Tem.

Prior to Chesapeake, Pennoyer worked at H&K Strategies where he provided strategic counsel and crisis support to a wide range of clients. Additionally, he is a veteran of two presidential campaigns and political conventions.

Pennoyer graduated from Kenyon College and earned his MBA from Rice University. He currently serves as the president of Millbrook School’s Alumni Association and as a member of the school’s board of trustees.

Synopsis: Adkins will detail the bullish supply/demand fundamentals that are likely to lead to sustainably higher oil prices over the next five years. In addition to looking at the near-term oil price drivers such as COVID related demand recovery, U.S. oil and gas capital starvation impact on the U.S. oil supply outlook, and OPEC capacity and willingness to produce at different price points, he will also delve into longer term issues such as oil demand displacement from electric vehicles, the consequences of electric grid transformation to wind and solar, and the challenges with increasing oil supply over the next decade.

SPEAKER BIO

Marshall Adkins joined Raymond James in 1995 and serves as the head of the firm’s Energy Investment Banking practice. Previously, Adkins served as the director of Energy Research for 25 years focusing on oilfield services and products and he also spent 10 years in the oilfield services industry as a project manager, financial analyst and engineer. He holds a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering and an MBA from UT Austin.

SPEAKER BIO

Bob Abendschein is the executive vice president and head of operations for Talos Energy. Prior to Talos, he was the chief executive officer of Venari Resources LLC, where he was appointed by a consortium of private equity investors to lead the advancement of multiple globally recognized development projects and managed all stages of strategy, exploration and operational leadership activities.

Before joining Venari, Abendschein spent 33 years at Anadarko Petroleum Corp., where held various corporate and executive divisional roles, including vice president of deepwater and vice president of exploration and production services. His career at Anadarko included progressive roles in reservoir engineering, exploration, production services, corporate development and worldwide deepwater operations.

Abendschein currently serves on the board of directors for the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and the Offshore Energy Center. He received a bachelor of science in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University.

Synopsis: Instead of a self- and industry-serving “arm’s race” to a cleaner world, do we revert to box-checking data provision with minimal attention or impact? This panel will discuss the future and impact of ESG.

SPEAKER BIOS

Barbara Baumann currently serves as a director of publicly traded Devon Energy Corp. and National Fuels Gas Corp. At Devon, she chairs the board’s Governance, Environmental, and Public Policy Committee. She is a director of privately held Ascent Resources Corp. and Texas America Resources II Corp. Baumann also is an independent trustee of the Putnam Mutual Funds and a senior advisor of the private equity firm First Reserve. She formerly served as a director of Buckeye Partners, LP; SM Energy; CVR Energy; and UNS Energy.

Baumann worked at Amoco and BP-Amoco from 1981-1999 in various financial and operating management roles, including as vice president of one of the company’s six North American E&P business units. She subsequently held various private equity and consulting roles associated with the upstream sector and now heads Cross Creek Energy Corp.  

She is actively involved with Denver-area non-profits, serving on the Finance Committee of Children’s Hospital Colorado and on the investment committee of The Denver Foundation. She is a previous board chair of Girls, Inc. of Metro Denver.

Baumann received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she was formerly a trustee and chair of its board.

Jason Isaac is director of Life:Powered, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ.

Prior to joining Life:Powered, Issac, a fourth-generation native Texan, was elected four times as the State Representative for Hays and Blanco counties in the Texas Hill Country. He served on the Energy Resources and Environmental Regulation committees, among others.

During his eight years of service, he successfully passed legislation to reduce taxes, strengthen election integrity, improve public education, preserve Second Amendment rights, protect local groundwater and protect private property rights. He was repeatedly honored for his commitment to limited government and proved to be an effective leader, excelling at both advocating for conservative principles and working across the aisle to find responsible solutions for the future of the Lone Star State.

Issac has appeared on national news shows, and his commentaries have been published in The Hill, The Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller and other publications.

He is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University and serves as a high school lacrosse coach. He lives in Hays County with his wife, Carrie and two sons.

David de Roode is an executive vice president and a Lockton partner with the Lockton Companies. His global energy, transportation and logistics practice focuses on delivering risk finance as well as risk mitigation and management counsel to his clients inclusive of traditional and alternative insurance and non-insurance-based solutions. These solutions are designed to address a company’s unique contractual, operational, financial, transactional, information technology, intellectual property, environmental, regulatory, reputation, healthcare and human capital risks while promoting the execution of their corporate objectives and earnings expansion. He also serves as a board member and board advisor to several for-profit companies in the energy, financials services and healthcare technology sectors.

Jim Wicklund is a managing director and senior banker in the Energy Group at Stephens Inc.  This follows a career in geophysics, engineering and operations in the global oil and gas industry, four years managing a broad energy investment portfolio and decades of following the industry as a senior research analyst.

He has lived and worked in Australia, Singapore, Milan, London several times as well as the U.S., with Western Geophysical, Sun Oil and ECL before joining the financial services industry as a research analyst covering the Oilfield Services sector.

He is a member and past symposium chair of the Society of Petroleum Engineers , the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, on the boards of the National Offshore Industry Association, the Petroleum Equipment Suppliers Association and the Maguire Institute Advisory Board at SMU, his alma mater.

Synopsis: The U.S. energy sector is undergoing a dramatic transformation and the power sector is changing faster than any other sector. Our energy future is being restructured by policy changes such as state renewable portfolio standards and other global and domestic decarbonization projects; commercial needs such as the reinvention of the traditional utility and power grid models and private business initiatives for renewable-based power purchase arrangements; and technological innovations including ever-cheaper renewables and battery storage. This presentation will provide a macro perspective of how the U.S. electricity markets work, will explore these and other drivers causing the grid to change, and will examine how these developments will affect primary source energy industries that supply our generation fleet.

SPEAKER BIO

Max Minzner is general counsel at Arcadia, where he oversees the legal and policy work of the company. He joined Arcadia from Jenner & Block, an Am Law 100 firm, where he was a partner in the energy practice. Until 2017, he was general counsel at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, supervising nearly 200 lawyers and legal professionals and guiding all of the legal aspects of the agency’s work, including matters involving electricity, natural gas and oil. During his time as FERC General Counsel, he was responsible for the agency’s role in litigating and implementing the United States Supreme Court decisions in FERC v. EPSA, 136 S. Ct. 760 (2016) and Hughes v. Talen Energy Marketing, 136 S. Ct. 1288 (2016).

He was previously a member of the faculty at both the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and the University of New Mexico School of Law, where he helped guide the law school in two different associate dean roles. He received his law degree from Yale Law School and a bachelor's degree from Brown University.

Synopsis: What drives global demand for oil and gas and thus commodity prices? What is the state of the global economy in early 2022, and what is expected to change during the remainder of the year? How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted global demand and the economy, and what is the expected long-term ramifications? This panel of industry professionals will address these and other related issues. 

SPEAKER BIOS

Allen Gilmer is the founder, advisor, and former CEO/chairman of Enverus (formerly Drillinginfo), the largest Software as a Service company in the energy industry and co-founder of Vecta Oil & Gas, Ltd, formed around his patents in the field of multicomponent seismology. 

He is a past chairman of TIPRO, a past Texas chairman and national board member of the Department of Energy's Petroleum Technology Transfer Council and serves on the Advisory Board for the UT El Paso College of Science and Colorado School of Mines Petroleum Engineering Department.

He was selected as Hart Energy's Top 20 Energy Innovators in 2019, UTEP Distinguished Alumni in 2017, Large Company CEO of the Year for Central Texas in 2014, Top 7 NAPE Influencers in 2014, Texas Monthly's Outstanding Geoscientist in 2012, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Central Texas in 2012 and Top 100 Energy Influencers in 2011.

William “Bill” Marko is a managing director of Jefferies LLC in the energy investment banking group. He has managed more than $70 billion of asset and corporate transactions. He specializes in applying detailed technical evaluations to M&A transactions. While his activities are focused in the U.S., Marko also works on worldwide projects with Jefferies’ London-based energy team and heads Jefferies’ Canadian upstream activities. Prior to joining Randall & Dewey, which was purchased by Jefferies, Marko worked for more than 18 years in various engineering, operations and commercial roles at Mobil Oil.

With over 38 years of industry experience in worldwide acquisition, divestment and new business development, Marko has evaluated transactions in all major U.S. basins and more than 70 countries. A registered professional engineer in Louisiana, he is chair of the Tulane University President’s Council and a member of the Tulane School of Science & Engineering Board of Advisors.

Dan Pickering is the chief investment officer of Pickering Energy Partners. PEP is an energy financial services company spanning traditional energy and the energy transition via business units focused on investments, insights, consulting and advisory.

Prior to PEP, Pickering served as the president of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company. He’s spent the past 27 years as an energy portfolio manager, researcher and analyst, first at Fidelity Investments, then as head of research at Simmons & Company and as the founding partner of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.

He grew up in Missouri, has a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering from the Missouri School of Science and Technology and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Pickering sits on the board of trustees for Texas Children’s Hospital, the Texas Children’s Hospital Foundation and the Posse Foundation, as well as the advisory board of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., Capital Creek Partners, Midway Companies, the Houston CFA Society and Energy ESG Council.

Sarah McLean, a partner at the law firm Shearman & Sterling, leads the firm’s private equity practice group. She has over 20 years of experience as a trusted advisor to private equity funds and management teams focused on the energy sector, representing them in connection with portfolio company investments, acquisitions and divestitures of upstream and midstream oil and gas assets and companies, formations of joint ventures, and various other private equity transactions, project documents and operating agreements across the entire oil and gas value chain.

After growing up in northwest Oklahoma, she obtained a bachelor's degree. in biochemistry and molecular biology, with honors, from Oklahoma State University and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. McLean and her children are active volunteers with Generation Serve and the recipients of the 2018 Wally Pilcher Family Volunteering Award.