Nov/Dec 2020 SHALE Magazine

SHALE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

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HOW WILL RETIREMENT CHANGE NOW THAT WOMEN ARE TAKING CHARGE?

TEXAS TECH:

THE ENERGY UNIVERSITY

FOUR KEY IDEAS THAT WILL TRANSFORM RETIREMENT FOR EVERYONE

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U.S. SHALE’S AMAZING RESILIENCY

MYRTLE JONES

IER: 6 FOUNDATIONS FUNNELING BIG MONEY TO THE ANTI-FRACKING MOVEMENT

RAISE A GLASS TO TEXAS’ TOP WINE COUNTIES

A REMARKABLE WOMAN WITH A REMARKABLE STORY

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

CONTENTS SHALE UPDATE

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Shale Play Short Takes If you had asked me when I was a little girl growing up in Heidelberg, Mississippi, if I would end up being the Senior VP of Tax at Halliburton, I would’ve said ‘absolutely not.’ It is something that was just inconceivable to me.”

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BUSINESS 52 How to Engage Utility Workers and Increase

POLICY 42 IER: 6 Foundations Funneling Big Money to the Anti-Fracking Movement

44 COVID, Cloudy Days and Chicken Fried Steak 46 The Texas Legislature Will Address a Big

Agenda During its 2020 Session

48 U.S. Shale’s First 20 Years: A Story of Transformation and Resilience

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The Impact of Data-Driven, Automated Drones on the Oil & Gas Industry

32 Enabling the Energy Transition:

Into a Multitude of Useful Products

COVER STORY

INDUSTRY

INDUSTRY

34 Texas Tech: The Energy University 36 New Technology Transforms Natural Gas

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U.S. Shale’s Amazing Resiliency

We have all seen feel-good movies about kids growing up in small towns across America who end up making their marks in places they could have never dreamed of while they were growing up. But those are just movies, works of celluloid and fiction, and it is a rare thing to come face with such a real story in the flesh. That was our experience when we sat down with Myrtle Jones, the Senior Vice President of Tax at service industry giant Halliburton.

COVER AND TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTOGRAPHY BY: MICHAEL GIORDANO

How Green Financing Can Help Industry Reduce Global Emissions

FEATURE

Safety by 70%

54 The Pandemic’s Impact on EmployerProvided Medical Plans 56 Steps to a Career Change in Difficult Times 58 How Will Retirement Change Now That Women Are Taking Charge?

LIFESTYLE 66 Mushroom Barley Soup: Turkey, Chicken, Beef or Vegetarian

SOCIAL 68 State of Energy Luncheon 68 Women's Energy Network

POLICY

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Inspiring Business Women

BUSINESS

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Proposed DOL Guidance Broadens Definition of Independent Contractors for Oil and Gas Employers

LIFESTYLE

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Raise a Glass to Texas’ Top Wine Counties

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Providing energy for the world while staying committed to our values.

Finding and producing the oil and natural gas the world needs is what we do. And our commitment to our SPIRIT Values—Safety, People, Integrity, Responsibility, Innovation and Teamwork— is how we do it. That includes caring about the environment and the communities where we live and work – now and into the future. © ConocoPhillips Company. 2017. All rights reserved.

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LETTER FROM THE CEO

HERE WE ARE AT THE END OF 2020.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think we would ever get here.

“Change” is the word of the year, and that includes change in the energy industry. We have seen ups, and we have seen the deepest downs in history. And that is why it is essential for all of us, from industry workers to consumers, to continue staying up-to-date with all the fast-paced changes that keep coming our way. SHALE Magazine is here to keep you informed about the energy industry, both nationally and internationally.

In this issue of SHALE Magazine, our annual Women’s Edition, you will meet some of the most inspiring women in business. The role of women in the energy industry is continuing to grow. As the CEO of SHALE and a woman, it is my mission to share the views and stories these unique women bring to the table.

I think you will be particularly fascinated to read our cover story about Myrtle Jones. She is living proof of the American dream — if you believe in yourself and put in the work, you can achieve your dreams — or even move beyond them.

Make sure to stay on top of current energy news by visiting SHALEMag. com and signing up for our e-newsletter. Significant changes are coming in 2021, so be looking out for our press releases.

CEO/Publisher of SHALE Magazine/Editor-in-Chief kym@shalemag.com

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KYM BOLADO

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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SHALE UPDATE

SHALE PLAY SHORT TAKES By: David Blackmon

Bakken Shale – North Dakota/Montana The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) secured the final regulatory approval needed to build a pump station and expand others in Illinois in mid-October, projects that should help it nearly double oil capacity. The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) approved Energy Transfer LP’s plan to build a pump station in Hancock County, IL, and expand other pumps already operating in Patoka, IL. The work would boost DAPL capacity to 1.1 million bpd from 570,000 bpd.

Denver/Julesburg (DJ) Basin - Colorado Chevron’s July acquisition of Noble Energy now establishes the integrated major as one of the biggest producers in the DJ Basin, which finds itself a point of public controversy and under attack by the state government. It will be interesting to see if the company holds onto its DJ Basin assets long term, given the higher administrative costs all the negative public and government attention brings to them.

Permian Basin – Texas/New Mexico The Permian Basin has become the focal point for a series of major acquisitions and mergers in the past few months, as companies look to increase the scale and qualify their holdings in the basin. Chevron kicked off the season of consolidation in late July with its acquisition of big independent Noble Energy. Devon Energy and WPX followed next with a merger announcement in September. Those deals were followed in October by a pair of major transactions: The buyout of Concho Resources by super independent ConocoPhillips and the merger of Pioneer Natural Resources and Parsley Energy.

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Eagle Ford Shale – Texas Prior to its acquisition of Permian producer Concho Resources in October, a company executive for ConocoPhillips said that it sees the Eagle Ford Shale as its current main domestic activity focus area.

ConocoPhillips has more rigs placed in the Eagle Ford than in the much busier Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico, where the bulk of industry activity is clustered, COO Matt Fox told the virtual Hart Energy DUG Permian/ DUG Eagle Ford conference on September 29. Obviously, that outlook will be impacted by the Concho deal, but Fox’s comments still represent a strong endorsement of the longterm quality of the Eagle Ford resource base.

Marcellus/Utica Shale – Pennsylvania/West Virginia/Ohio Enmeshed in its Chapter 11 proceedings, Chesapeake Energy said it plans to divest its assets in the Mid-Continent play but will keep its assets in the Marcellus Shale, the Eagle Ford Shale, the Powder River Basin, the Haynesville Shale and the Bravos River fields, according to a Kallanish Energy report in mid-October. In its SEC filings, the company is projecting total revenues of $3 billion in 2021, $2.5 billion in 2022, $2.3 billion in 2023, $2.25 billion in 2024 and 2025. The company said it has also identified $2.5 billion in potential savings over the next ten years.

Haynesville/Bossier Play – Louisiana/East Texas

SCOOP/STACK Play – Oklahoma Rivera Resources, the successor company to LINN Energy and operator of Blue Mountain Midstream LLC, announced the dissolution of the company in midOctober. The dissolution of assets included the sale of Blue Mountain for $111 million to Citizen Energy and the sale of other Anadarko Basin properties for $13 million.

Stronger prices for natural gas heading into the winter months had a positive impact on Haynesville Shale production. The steady uptick in Haynesville drilling this summer appears finally to have reversed a downward trend in production that had been ongoing since early May. Month to date, output has averaged 12 Bcf/d – about 200 MMcf/d above the prior-month average and significantly higher compared with recent lows around 11.5 Bcf/d, data compiled by S&P Global Platts Analytics showed.

On Sept. 25, prices for the approaching peak-winter months of December, January and February were assessed at $3.28, $3.40 and $3.35/MMBtu, respectively – up more than 50 cents compared to prices in late July.

About the author: David Blackmon is the Editor of SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine. He previously spent 37 years in the oil and natural gas industry in a variety of roles — the last 22 years engaging in public policy issues at the state and national levels. Contact David Blackmon at editor@shalemag.com.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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 FEATURE

U.S. Shale’s Amazing Resiliency By: Thomas Shepstone

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fuel of choice for electricity generation. This, of course, is precisely why carbon emissions (and many other far more detrimental emissions) have been reduced enormously, thereby cleaning the air everywhere.

We see this irreplaceable dynamic reflected in the foreign demand for our gas, which goes to Mexico by pipeline, and around the world as Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). A recent isolated problem with LNG shipments, in fact, caused the price of natural gas to rise quickly due to high demand and a temporarily constricted

supply. The tiniest interruption of that supply changes everything at once, demonstrating just how dependent the globe is on our natural gas, gas available in plentiful supplies due to our shale revolution. Resiliency is guaranteed

by U.S. energy dominance forged out of shale.

Furthermore, consider California and Germany’s problems of excess dependency on renewables. California is ever darker when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine because it has not enough dispatchable energy to deploy when this happens. Germany has experienced

DENISMAX/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

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here’s nothing like shale for resiliency. It has, time and again, prevailed over supposed deaths of its future. Indeed, from the very moment of its initial success, supposed “experts” have been predicting it was but a passing fad, a money pit or a disaster waiting to happen. Ian Urbina built a career around his “Drilling Down” series for The New York Times, suggesting the whole shale enterprise was destined for the trash heap of history.

Yet, we just witnessed a presidential candidate being forced to say he wouldn’t shut down fracking. Shale not only survives, but it has changed everything about energy in but a little over a decade.

Oh, shale has had its ups and downs, to be sure, but that is hardly surprising for a young commodity business. So has steel or any number of other commodities that have been around a whole lot longer. And farming has been a roller coaster enterprise from the moment agriculture became a business. Five months ago, shale gas was clearly on the downside of the coaster with prices at or below $1.50 per thousand cubic feet, and, as I write this, it is now double that. These are the sorrows and joys of any commodity business.

But, shale gas is different in one respect; it has simply amazing resiliency compared to other commodities. While the steelmaker and the farmer often have to endure long periods of decline, shale tends to recover more quickly because it is a technology-driven industry where adaptation to low prices happens more quickly. Production can be slowed or increased relatively quickly, of course, but the main thing with any commodity is to consistently lower costs by doing things in smarter ways (drilling at different levels from the same well pad, for example). That’s happening with every successful shale outfit.

There’s another factor, though, which is the irreplaceable nature of natural gas in the economy and the environment. The low price of natural gas relative to other dependable and dispatchable energy sources makes it the

unacceptable rises in electricity costs for a related reason; its renewable generation produces too much energy when not needed and invariably takes business from irreplaceable natural gas plants, making them far more costly to operate when needed. And they are frequently needed.

The renewable stuff is arguably cheap, but it cannot stand alone. The blended price of electricity has soared out-of-sight as a consequence.

This is why California is quietly and indirectly admitting it needs more gas plants, and Germany is buying our LNG, while the latter is also making bad deals with Russia to secure more gas. Readily available American shale gas has made it the solution even for its opponents, hence its resiliency.

The future will likely produce more of the same. New York is emulating California and trying to squelch anything whatsoever having to do with shale gas. Utilities are largely playing

along, knowing that the costs of mistakes can, in the end, always be recovered by ratepayers.

There is even a move now to replace New York City’s invaluable gas fueled peaker electricity generating plants with battery storage.

It won’t work any better than any of the other unaffordable and undependable schemes, of course. Last year, an explosion at an Arizona Public Service (APS) battery storage facility sent four firefighters to the hospital. There was a similar APS incident seven years earlier. Such a failure in the middle of New York City will be all it takes to quietly reverse direction there as well.

Yes, resiliency is the very nature of shale.

Some readers may recall, in fact, a woman named Deborah Rogers, a goat farmer, financial manager, former model and part of the Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project.

Back in 2012 and 2013, she was running all over the country saying that all shale oil and gas would be depleted in a decade or so, that drilling rates and costs would increase as drillers rushed to keep up production and that “our country will have drilled and fracked our way down a blind alley (with huge associated economic and environmental costs).”

Here we are seven to eight years later, and we have, if anything, an oversupply of gas, dramatically lowered costs of production per unit and rising, but still exceptionally reasonable, gas prices for consumers, not to mention hugely cleaner air. I call that success.

Sure, there are companies that have been squeezed out by low prices and high debt, but that’s the way commodity markets work, and there are numerous companies that have adapted and prospered because they innovated and found ways to lower costs. Prices are votes of consumers, and those who pay attention not only survive but rise to the top. We are seeing that today with several companies, while others who took on too much debt and overhead or failed to innovate are being absorbed by the others. This is exactly how it is with steel and dairying, and it absolutely should be.

Adaptation and change are the marks of resiliency, and we are seeing it in every corner of the shale industry. The future is promising as the world seeks our product to meet economic and environmental challenges. The rural gas producing regions of our nation also benefit greatly, which is why fracking became a positive political issue in 2020. That alone speaks to the irrepressible quality of shale; it just keeps coming back to the top as one issue after another is resolved, and its enemies are forced to confront the reality that is the shale industry.

Adaptation and change are the marks of resiliency, and we are seeing it in every corner of the shale industry

About the author: Tom Shepstone is the owner of Shepstone Management Company Inc., a planning and research consulting firm located in northeastern Pennsylvania. He has advised many counties in both New York state and Pennsylvania, as well as other states, on economic development strategies, especially as they relate to rural and agricultural areas. He is also the publisher of NaturalGasNOW.org, a blog focused on the same objective.

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cover story

MYRTLE JONES

A REMARKABLE WOMAN WITH A REMARKABLE STORY By: David Blackmon Photography by: Michael Giordano

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I was truly raised by a village, you know.”

“If you had asked me when I was a little girl growing up in Heidelberg, Mississippi, if I would end up being the Senior VP of Tax at Halliburton, I would’ve said ‘absolutely not.’ It is something that was just inconceivable to me.”

We have all seen feel-good movies about kids growing up in small towns across America who end up making their marks in places they could have never dreamed of while they were growing up. But those are just movies, works of celluloid and fiction, and it is a rare thing to come face with such a real story in the flesh. That was our experience when we sat down with Myrtle Jones, the Senior Vice President of Tax at service industry giant Halliburton.

Heidelberg is a rural farming community located in the southeastern part of Mississippi, about 30 miles to the north of Hattiesburg. Situated in Jasper County, it lies in the midst of the largest oil-producing part of the state, although farming is really its main business. As is sadly typical of such agricultural communities in America, Heidelberg’s population has actually shrunk over the past several decades, dropping to just 714 souls in the 2010 census.

The town had about 1,000 residents during the 1960s and 1970s when Jones was growing up there, with perhaps 100 more than the 349 households recorded in that 2010 census.

The Jones family didn’t actually reside within the city limits but rather on a small farm a few miles down the road.

“We had all the farm animals: cows and pigs and chickens,” she told us. “We basically grew all of our food on the farm between the gardens and fields. We grew cotton up until the time I was 8 or 9 years old — that was our cash crop. My grandfather was basically the driving force behind the cotton, and so fortunately for me, I was spared the cotton fields because by the time I was old enough to pick up my cotton sack and head to the fields, he had stopped doing it,” she added with a laugh.

As was quite common in such rural southern communities at the time, the Jones family was a multi-generational unit who all lived very close to one another. “It was me, my seven siblings, my parents and my grandparents. It was kind of a community where we lived, where our houses were within 50 yards from each other,” she recalled, adding, “You couldn’t get away with anything! I was truly raised by a village, you know. I’m actually the youngest of the eight children. I didn’t get away with anything.”

Jones’s mother worked outside the home, and for a secondary business, the family also ran a general store that served the other farms in the surrounding area. “My mother

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SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

IF YOU HAD ASKED ME WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL GROWING UP IN HEIDELBERG, MISSISSIPPI, IF I WOULD END UP BEING THE SENIOR VP OF TAX AT HALLIBURTON, I WOULD’VE SAID ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT’

was a domestic worker. So, my parents were always busy,” she said. “They were always working hard to make ends meet along there with my grandparents. We also had a little tiny country store. It didn’t even stay open. It opened when someone came to buy something. It was like ‘Oh, somebody wants something from the store.’ So, you went and unlocked it, and then locked it back up when they were done. It just had staples like flour, sugar and cornmeal and bread and soda. It wasn’t like a big popular place; it was just what you would call a mom and pop store.

“That’s the environment that I grew up in.”

It was the kind of environment that has largely been lost to modern times, but one in which Myrtle Jones learned early about the values of hard work, of dependability, of community, of mutual respect and of collaborating with others to get things done.

Anyone who has spent time in the corporate world knows that these are values that can help a person to rise to high levels within any organization. They are all too rare and thus prized by upper management. Jones told us that, although unaware of where it would lead her at the time, she continued to learn these values and more while going to school in Heidelberg.

“I was always very civic, I would say,” she responded when asked about the kinds of extracurricular activities she was involved in at Heidelberg High. “I was in all the different types of clubs. I was Student Council Treasurer, Class Secretary. I was in things like The Explorers Club, Beta Club, and I always found myself being an officer of these clubs, if not President.

I was always a leader.”

But the obligations of family and farm left little occasion for other activities that required her to spend time at school outside of normal hours. “I didn’t do much of the band and the choir or things that require a lot of after school time, as you can imagine; there were chores to do when I got back home,” she continued. “We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so to be honest with you, transportation was usually an issue for those types of activities so that limited some of what I could do. To help out on the farm and also just the limitations on transportation and being able to get back and forth, that kind of dictated that I not do things like choir and band and what have you. But I managed to stay very busy and engaged in the different clubs and stuff that school had to offer.”

The enterprising student also held down a job during her junior and senior years. “There was a program for the students who were from low-income families to get summer jobs, so my first job was working in the principal’s office during the summer. Once the summer was over going into my senior year, the principal asked me if I would continue to work in the office and help the secretary. Instead of getting paid, because that program was only during the summer, they offered to defray some of my costs of things like graduation pictures and my graduation ring and things like that. So, I worked all through my senior year in the principal’s office and then went back to work in the summer.”

That experience taught Jones the value of being able to hold down an office job. “So, where a lot of kids may have got their working start like in a fast-food restaurant or bussing tables somewhere, my first job was in an office,” she said, adding with a laugh that “I realized early on that I liked sitting in an air-conditioned office to do my work a lot better than I liked working on the farm.”

I decided at 15 years old that I wanted to be an accountant.”

When we asked Myrtle to talk about the factors that led her to seek her degree in accounting at Mississippi State University, she surprised us by saying that “I decided at 15 years old that I wanted to be an accountant.” That’s a decision that very few people make at such a young age, but it made perfect sense when she described how it all came about.

“Even though I went to this really small high school in Mississippi, which is not known for having the best school systems, our high school actually offered business classes,” she told us. “They offered bookkeeping and accounting and some other classes that were business-related. So, when I was a sophomore in high school, one of my friends approached me, and it was really funny, she said ‘Hey, what are you doing 4th period?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, I think I have study hall.’

And she said, ‘Well, the accounting class is during 4th period, and I’m going to sign up for it. Will you sign up for it with me?’

And I was like, “Okay! Better than Study Hall, right?”

Well, when you put it that way…

She continued: “It was interesting because normally the people in that class would be juniors and seniors, so I was a little intimidated by it. I was not as outgoing as the person you see before you today, but my friend was very outgoing, so since she was taking the class, of course I would follow her. I took the class, and at that moment, I knew I wanted to major in accounting.

“I was able to think about the different things we did in that little store and how that affects business,” she said. “Even when I was really young, my grandmother would have me sit down every month and write out her bills for her and get the money orders ready to pay the utility bills. She would also set up and tell me the things she needed from the grocery store, and she would give me the money to go buy the groceries.

“So, I was used to dealing with money, and somehow or another, my brain connected the link between the accounting class and these different things, and that made the class fun for me.”

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We get to make those decisions now.”

It was the making of those early connections that led Jones through Mississippi State to an extraordinary career that now sees her managing the tax department of the largest oilfield service company in America and one of the largest and most diverse service companies in the world. Today, this girl who grew up in tiny Heidelberg in the ‘60s and ‘70s oversees a staff of about 220 people who must account for and ensure Halliburton is meeting its tax obligations in more than 80 countries where it operates around the globe.

Rising to such a level is an extraordinary achievement for anyone, but especially impressive when one considers that Jones came into the energy business in the 1980s, when it remained by and large a big “good ol’ boys” club that made it very hard for women – and minority women in particular – to rise into managerial positions.

We asked her if she has seen that environment evolve over the years. “Yes, it has,” she said. “When I first started in the energy business, it was rare to even have women on the operations side. My first big energy job where I was really involved in more than just putting some numbers on a tax return was at Global Santa Fe, which is an offshore drilling company. And the idea that a woman would be out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico for 21 days with men, well, that was just unheard of. It just didn’t happen.

“But that was not just out on the rigs; it was also in the corporate office. So, breaking that barrier down was — I’m sure it was easier on the corporate side than it was out in the field, but even on the corporate side, it was difficult.”

It may be surprising for some to hear these days, but one of the big barriers had to do with women engaging in business travel. “In order for me to progress as a tax professional, I have to go where the issues are,” Jones said. “We

didn’t operate just in the UK, and we didn’t operate just in the Netherlands; we also operated in Nigeria and Venezuela, and in remote places that are very challenging.

“And initially, being able to work on the assignments that would give me the experience that I needed to progress, there would be very open conversations that were like, ‘Well, should we really send you off to West Africa?’

And I’d say, ‘Well, this is where the audit is, and this is where the issues are, and so in order for me to get my arms around it, I need to go to West Africa.’ And they’d say, ‘Well, are you ok with that? Is your husband going to feel alright about it?’

“You know, I was married at the time. (She has since divorced.) ‘How’s your husband going to feel about it?’ Well, he really doesn’t have a say so. Those were the kinds of conversations, and if it was happening for me in a corporate space, I imagine it was happening a hundred-fold to others.

“But luckily, I worked with people who actually asked the questions and allowed me to decide, as opposed to deciding for me. I think that’s what women were facing for a very long time: That those decisions were being made for us. We were not being allowed to say; we were not being allowed to make that decision for ourselves.

“So I think the biggest thing that has changed is that we now get to decide. We have a say so in that, and we get to say, ‘Yes, I have chosen to pursue a career in energy, and therefore I am willing to go into the harsh environments that you typically think of as being only suitable for men. I am willing to be in a remote location or a rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea or what have you where I am one amongst only a few women, and I am comfortable with that.’ We get to make those decisions now, and that is an important part of why we have made the progress that we have.”

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My success depends entirely upon the success of the people who work for me.”

SO I THINK THE BIGGEST THING THAT HAS CHANGED IS THAT WE NOW GET TO DECIDE. WE HAVE A SAY SO IN THAT, AND WE GET TO SAY, ‘YES, I HAVE CHOSEN TO PURSUE A CAREER IN ENERGY, AND THEREFORE I AM WILLING TO GO INTO THE HARSH ENVIRONMENTS THAT YOU TYPICALLY THINK OF AS BEING ONLY SUITABLE FOR MEN

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The most successful leaders in any environment or organization are those who put most of their efforts into maximizing the effectiveness and success of those they lead. While one would think that this would go without saying, it is truly amazing how many of those placed in leadership positions ignore this simple fact.

Fortunately for Halliburton, Myrtle Jones is not one of those people. “I like to think of myself as a servant leader, that I’m actually there to serve the people that work for me,” she told us when we asked her to describe her leadership philosophy. “It’s about understanding what they need in order to succeed, not only professionally, but also personally.

It’s about doing whatever I can to help give them those things that they need to get their job done properly and also to develop them to perform and to advance within the company.

“So, my overall goal in leading people is to serve them and to allow them and help them to do their job. Because look, Halliburton is a huge company, and it’s complex, and the work we do is very technical, and it is very material to our bottom line.

“I can’t do that work,” she continued. “My success depends entirely upon the success of the people who work for me, and I realize that every single day. I make sure that they know that I know that I am totally dependent upon them to succeed and to deliver value to Halliburton.”

But there’s more to being a successful leader than that: Jones also makes sure to lead by example. “The other part of my leadership style has been to not ask people to do things that I have not done myself. I can’t always say that anymore, though, because things have changed in the several decades that I came into the tax world, but I do try to lead with empathy. So, I do try to put myself in their shoes and have empathy for their situation. My goal is to motivate — not to direct, not to demand — to motivate and inspire people to want to be their best selves and to want to do their best work. In a nutshell, that is what I aspire to do, that is the type of leader that I aspire to be.”

The very fact that she has advanced to such a high position in Halliburton’s huge organization tells us all we need to know about how highly she is regarded internally. But Jones’s leadership and success have also been recognized externally. Her resume sports an array of impressive external awards, including Black Enterprise Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful

Women in Corporate America, The Diversity Council’s Diversity Leader of the Year of Award, Diversity Journal’s Women Worth Watching Award and the Houston Business Journals Top 25 Women in Oil and Gas. We asked her what it means to her to be on the receiving end of this kind of external recognition, and her answer was not at all surprising. “It’s very humbling. It’s not something I ever sought out or expected,” she told us. “My goal was never to stand out for that sort of recognition. The goal was always to just be the best I could be and to work to my highest potential. That was always the goal, and then I hoped that my potential and the work that I did would be recognized, not in a public way, but recognized by people that I worked for and that I would be rewarded for that by being able to progress in my career.

“So, when the recognitions and awards come along with that, again, it's very humbling. I accept it, and I hope by accepting it and being on a platform where other people can see me, that will inspire people that look like other women and other people that look like me to understand that they too can rise. That they too can achieve — that I’m a living, breathing, tangible symbol of what can be done if you put in the effort and you continue to work toward achieving your goals. So that really, for me, is the reward of that kind of recognition.”

It also came as no surprise to learn that Jones makes a point of applying her leadership and life lessons to volunteer work and community involvement, working on an array of efforts that are near and dear to her heart.

“Community service is very important to me,” she said. “I feel like that’s me completing the cycle because if you’ve been listening, you’ve probably heard from the very beginning of this conversation that I understand that I got to where I am on the shoulders of a lot of people. It’s thanks to people believing in me and not only believing in me but investing in me, investing their time in me, and in some cases, financial support.

“I didn’t pay a dime to go to college. There weren’t a lot of scholarships being offered, but the income bracket that my family was in at the time, we qualified for things like grants and what have you that actually covered my college tuition. Then, I worked part-time to help pay for the other expenses that were incurred. So, I was raised to believe that to whom much is given, much is expected. And that it is expected that you give back, so that is why community service is so important to me.”

Jones has served on the boards of several organizations. One, in particular, Genesys Works, hits very close to where she came from. “Genesys Works serves high school juniors and seniors from the economically challenged neighborhoods,” she said. “It provides them with the same type of experience that I had working in that high school principal’s office, except these kids get to

work in a corporate office. We provide them training in accounting or engineering or IT, and then they spend a year or a summer in an internship in a corporation. I actually sat on that board for a little over six years, and I was chairman of it as well. That one means a lot to me because that’s really putting into something that I believe was instrumental in my success in helping other kids have a similar experience.

Currently, Jones is also on the board for Dress for Success Houston, the Houston Zoo and Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston. “I try to make my board service to mirror things that I feel very passionate about, and that it be targeted,” she said. “When I sit on a board, I do the work. I don’t sit on a board just to show up and have my name on a roster, but it’s to do the work, and so it has to be something I’m really passionate about.

Dress for Success also hits very close to home for Jones. “When you think about Dress for Success, yeah, the first time I wore a suit, the first time I owned a suit was when I was getting ready for my interviews out of college,” she told us. “I couldn’t afford to go and buy a fancy suit, and my mom gave me $50. I went to the fabric store, and I got some fabric and a pattern and took it to a dressmaker, and she made me my homemade suit for my interviews. You know even going into that, that you're not looking like a lot of other people that are going into those interviews with their Brooks Brothers suit and so on and so forth.

“So, in Houston, this organization serves women that were like my mom who didn’t get a chance. At least it’s giving those women a chance to build their lives beyond the position that they find themselves in at any particular point in time.”

Jones also applies her talents to mentoring employees internally. “At Halliburton, I can probably count about six or seven people that I mentor or that I have mentored. We have a mentoring program within our finance group, and I’m the executive sponsor of that. I am also the executive sponsor of our Black Employees ERG at Halliburton.”

This would seem overwhelming to most people, but it’s seemingly all in a day’s work for Myrtle Jones.

But her life is not all about business; Jones is the very proud mother of three children, and it will come as no surprise to any reader that she has been successful in this part of her life as well.

“I have three children. I have two girls and a boy: two accountants and one computer scientist. My second daughter has recently returned to school. She’s getting her Ph.D. in computer science, so she’s actually at Stanford right now. My son is pursuing his master’s degree at A&M. The one thing that I’m more proud of than my career is my kids.”

They have definitely not made anything simpler.”

Tax is a very specialized piece of any business, and obviously, the U.S. tax code has evolved to a large extent over the course of Jones’s career.

Since she came out of college in the mid-1980s, Congress has engaged in several efforts to simplify the tax code. We asked Jones if those efforts have been successful.

“No!” she laughed. “They definitely have not made anything simpler. In fact, they’ve made it more complex.

“In 2017, we had the first major overhaul of the tax code that we’d had in 30 years. They initially started out saying it was for tax simplification, but before they finalized it, they had completely abandoned the idea that it was going to be simpler because it had gotten more complex.

“So, with the passage of the law, our workload actually increased as opposed to decreased. Halliburton’s tax burden went down, but our complexity and our compliance burden went up. For us, that’s a trade-off. Of course, we think that it's good, and it’s appropriate that U.S. multinationals be taxed on the same basis as the companies that we compete with for business around the world. So that was why that law change was very important for us. But that complexity, I just don’t think that’s going away. I don’t think we’re ever going to get to a place where it’s simple, easy to understand, and easy to comply with.”

Of course, that just describes the complexity of dealing with the U.S. tax code. It’s important to remember that Halliburton operates in 80 countries internationally, all of which have their own complex tax laws with which the company must be careful to comply.

“That’s why it’s so important that I have the amazing group of people that I have working for me that are managing the day to day issues and are also bringing forth to me the material issues that I need to be aware of and that I need to weigh in on,” Jones said. “As the head of Tax, my job is to manage people and to manage our tax risk because taxes are very uncertain, and they are subject to change.

“Some changes arise because the law changed. Others can be because the interpretation of the law by the courts changed. So, it requires people who are hardworking, intelligent people who are also able to handle the complexity and the marrying of the different responsibilities that they deal with day to day and to also have the judgment to bring me in on a more detailed basis when the situation dictates it.

“We have all kinds of internal controls in place that when a switch is flipped based on certain conditions, things get escalated right away. Think along the lines of a decision tree, and policies and procedures that basically document what that decision tree is that says ‘this can be handled locally,’ ‘this you bring to a director,’ and ‘this you bring in the Senior VP of Tax.’ And then there’s other areas that once it becomes of a certain magnitude that I’m in discussion with the CFO, or we’re talking to the Audit Committee.”

Before the 2017 changes to the corporate tax laws, “it used to be that your taxes could eat away 35% of your profits. Now, your taxes can still eat away

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21% of your profits at a minimum. That’s a big bite.

So, it gets a lot of attention. It gets a lot of attention not only from our governmental auditors, it gets a lot of attention from our internal audit group, as well as our accounting auditors.”

She pauses for a second, then laughs. “So, in this article, I hope that I don’t frighten people into not wanting to go into tax. I’m telling you things that you probably weren’t even aware are the things that should keep me up at night. But they don’t keep me up at night because I have a great department, and I have great people working for me.

“But those are the types of things that go into my job, and of managing Halliburton’s tax risk: Making sure that we’re compliant with tax laws in 80 countries — making sure that our tax returns are filed on time and that we’re paying the right amount of tax. — making sure that we manage our tax controversy in a way that we don’t get material adjustments to what we think our taxes should be and what our taxes ultimately end up being — and also making sure that we organize our business in such a way that we don’t pay any more tax than we are legally required to pay.

“People tend to look at this kind of tax planning as if it were tax evasion, but we do not commit tax evasion. That is absolutely not what we do. But we do actively look for opportunities to arrange our business in such a way that we don’t pay any more taxes than we would otherwise have to.”

Of course, in 2020, managing tax or any other aspect of a business has become even more challenging than before due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked Myrtle to talk about the kinds of accommodations and adjustments her group has had to make in order to deal with this new environment.

“100% of my group has been impacted in one way or another,” she told us. “My entire U.S. office is still working from home. There may be some pockets of people outside of the U.S. where the virus is maybe more contained, and there’s a little bit more time being spent in the office, but we have been working remotely since Houston and Texas started the stay-at-home, work-from-home directives.

“The transition has been a challenge. Prior to this thing, Halliburton had not really moved toward any type of permanent flex-type schedule for people to work from home a couple of days, except for in certain specific situations. So we had to shift from

almost no one working from home to everybody working from home in a very short period of time.

“And when I tell you that when (Halliburton CEO) Jeff Miller talks about Halliburton being an execution company, that doesn’t just apply out in the oil field. That applies everywhere, and we executed. For finance, it was even more stressful because we were coming up on the first-quarter close right when it all hit. So, think about it: it’s first-quarter close, there’s a severe downturn in the industry, and we’re all working from home for the very first time.”

The array of considerations that had to be dealt with was daunting. “You know, making sure people had adequate Wi-Fi, making sure people even had the equipment they needed. I can remember those days before, on Friday before we left, I can remember sending an email to my entire department saying ‘make sure you take your laptop home with you every day just in case you're aren’t allowed to come back to the office.’

“Were there a couple of kinks? Yes. But I don’t know that anyone could’ve done it better, and we’re still adjusting to some of the things about working from home right now. I think if you had been planning for it, and you did it after a year of planning that you would probably be in better shape, but we are handling it extremely well.”

Handling it as a team; handling it together; handling it well. This is how Myrtle Jones leads; it is what she does; it is who she is in all aspects of her life.

With all of her achievements and successes in the corporate world and her personal life, Jones, in many ways, remains that little girl growing up on a multi-generational farm in rural Mississippi, still applying all of the life lessons she learned there.

She has never forgotten where she came from and how she got where she is today. “Where I am today, in terms of where I started, is something that was just inconceivable to me. I am incredibly grateful for all the opportunities that I’ve had, and for all the people who invested in me and who believed in me and gave me an opportunity coming into an industry where there were very few women and even fewer black women or men in that profession and giving me an opportunity. There’s just been some really remarkable people in my life at different points in my career that allowed me to be where I am today.”

Remarkable, indeed.

About the author: David Blackmon is the Editor of SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine. He previously spent 37 years in the oil and natural gas industry in a variety of roles — the last 22 years engaging in public policy issues at the state and national levels. Contact David Blackmon at editor@shalemag.com.

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INDUSTRY

The Impact of Data-Driven, Automated Drones on the Oil & Gas Industry

T

he business impact and long-lasting benefits drones offer have put them on a clear path to becoming an industry standard. Automated drones have been tapped as one of the next game-changing innovations for the oil and gas industry, largely because of the substantial cost savings they offer. Additionally, drone technology has the potential to become the primary method for inspection and monitoring of a facility, as well as a rapid response and assessment tool for incidents, whether offshore or onshore.

When inspecting hard-to-reach areas, traditional methods usually involve shutting down operations, building scaffolding or setting rope lines and sending an inspector into a hazardous area with a camera.

The logistics involved in these processes, the danger of putting personnel in harm’s way and the costly shutdown time required significantly impact the bottom line. Additionally, physical inspections of assets such as the top of tanks tend to be conducted manually, and maintenance decisions such as visual inspections, which are often made subjectively, can be affected by many factors including weather, lighting and time of day. The regularity of maintenance inspections to prevent and avoid leaks, explosions and other potentially fatal errors requires extensive readiness and preparedness by site managers, engineers and maintenance personnel.

Drones are becoming an integral tool on-site, replacing manual inspections in the most hazardous areas and collecting critical information while drastically reducing the time and manpower required.

Drones serve as a unique, costeffective and safe industry tool for

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data collection in hard-to-access areas, thus keeping humans out of harm’s way, as well as reducing overall asset downtime in upstream, midstream and downstream operations. For example, using a drone to collect visual data on the condition of an asset enables industry personnel to ensure proper maintenance of a facility’s assets and improves cost savings, safety and enhanced analytics.

How drones can benefit an oil and gas facility • Reduce Risk: Improve safety by gaining real time aerial insights and remotely scanning & accessing areas, without putting personnel in harm’s way • Advance Efficiency: Boost productivity by enabling agile teams to operate larger & more complex operations through access to near real-time aerial data & insights • Improve Productivity: Save time by enabling and fostering collaboration on up to date data achieved through short turnaround times • Enhance Asset Efficiency: Improve asset utilization & integrity by relying on data driven decision making With added automation capabilities, the operational advantages brought on by drones are further augmented with consistent and reliable data capture, download,

SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

processing, and collaboration. Airobotics’ automated drone system minimizes risk to drone pilots and reduces dependency on having them available on-site to manage flights while adhering to all local aviation regulations. As a result, the major safety benefit is the ability for continuous inspection, survey and mapping, and compliance management in industrial settings without exposing personnel to potential hazards in the work environment.

With Airobotics, everything onsite can now be monitored non-intrusively and safely, without disrupting site operations. Operations do not have to be halted, as personnel are not physically required to inspect and take critical asset measurements. The frequency of measurements and inspections can be significantly increased while human risks are minimized to the absolute lowest possible rate.

Capable of swapping and carrying various sensors, Airobotics’ automated drones provide a source of data and digital information. And as such, the multiplying possibilities of drone-enabled data can add value to almost any site.

As the world’s first and only regulatory-compliant commercial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) solution that can be operated remotely, Airobotics’ end-to-end automated drone platform is purpose-built to simplify drone operations and transform aerial insights into routine.

Airobotics’ system has the unique capability to swap the drone’s batteries and payloads using a robotic arm, allowing for a diversity of payloads and mission types. The platform can automatically self-launch and land accurately, time after time.

For more information, visit www.airoboticsdrones.com

About the author: Eitan Rotberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management. Eitan serves as Airobotics’ Senior Vice President of Product Management and is a founding member of Airobotics. Previously, Eitan served as Airobotics’ Senior Vice President of Product R&D, Vice President of Product Management, Vice President of Regulations and General Manager Perth Australia and Vice President of Operations Israel. Before Airobotics, Eitan served as CEO of Bladeworx. He was also a Business Development and Project Manager at Yeadim LTC, Operations Manager at the Maavarim Group and a Drill and Blast Manager at the Geophysical Institute of Israel. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences and Management from the Open University of Israel.

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By: Eitan Rotberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Airobotics

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Enabling the Energy Transition: How Green Financing Can Help Industry Reduce Global Emissions By: Jack Belcher and Brent Greenfield

T

he oil and gas industry today faces many tests and trials. With low commodity prices, reduced demand, changing geopolitical alignment, climate change challenges, regulatory uncertainty, investor rejection of fossil energy, decarbonization, Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG), and everything associated with the “energy transition,” many are asking how the industry will meet the daunting challenges of our time.

These threats are often described as existential, and for many companies, they will be. However, the reality is we will continue to need oil and gas for decades into the future. That said, given increasing regulatory, social and investment pressure on carbon content, emissions, and other ESG factors, the most successful energy companies of the future will be the ones that financially succeed in the low-carbon world of the energy transition.

There are two fundamental questions regarding the oil and gas industry’s ability to meet the energy

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challenge, and they both involve finance. Technologies already exist that can significantly mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil energy production, yet the technologies require large capital investments in a sector that is already experiencing low margins and low commodity prices and utilizing a large and often aging energy complex and infrastructure. Thus, the fundamental question for the United States and the rest of the developed world is how to pay for the needed investments and obtain an attractive return.

For the developing world, the challenges are even more daunting. Populations are massive and growing, with many having little or no access to electricity. The existing energy portfolio tends to be highcarbon and heavily reliant on coal and the direct burning of biomass. Transmission infrastructure is scarce; credit is poor, corruption is high and political instability rampant. Therefore, a fundamental question for non-developed countries is how to modernize their electricity infrastructure in a low-carbon manner that provides reliable and affordable energy.

Some wonder why we concern ourselves so much with the emerging world. In that regard, it is important to remember that if we flipped a switch tomorrow and made the developed world zero-carbon, it would have little impact on future global greenhouse gas emissions. Driven by their growth and need for power, as demonstrated in the chart above, the emerging world — India, China, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America — is rapidly increasing its GHG emissions. Specifically, the number of coal-fired power plants in the emerging world is increasing on a massive scale. Vietnam alone has more than 50 new coal-fired power plants in the works.

Imagine if we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize and embark on a sustainable energy transition by focusing on eliminating flaring and methane emissions, ramping up carbon capture usage and storage projects, decommissioning and plugging old wells and idle iron, bringing LNG to the developing world to replace current and planned coal projects, and increasing hydrogen use. These things can be done with current technology, and all are economically feasible with the right financing mechanisms and incentives and capital, and all present sustainable solutions that could provide the biggest return on investment.

Green financing is a particularly effective tool to decarbonize the current energy complex to address greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. While many of the currently financed projects are important and make us feel good, positively impacting the planet will require green investments that include a focus on the fossil energy sector.

While climate change factors have put severe pressure on the oil and gas sector, especially when it comes to investment capital, trillions of dollars in investment capital are available in funds to support green projects, sustainability, and ESG goals. The investment tenet of ESG investment funds reflects a growing investor demand to deploy capital with long-term horizons mirrored with sustainability objectives. ESG investment funds target investments to companies with certain ESG performance standards, while green funds are investment vehicles that specifically only invest in companies that promote environmental responsibility or meet defined environmental criteria and long-term objectives.

Green bonds, another investment tool, are fixed-income instruments designed to raise money for climate and environmental projects and are backed by the issuer’s balance

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INDUSTRY

sheet, with credit ratings linked to the issuer’s ability to meet defined ESG benchmarks.

The value of global asset managers applying ESG data to drive investment decisions has almost doubled over four years and more than tripled over eight years to $40.5 trillion in 2020, according to Pensions & Investments Magazine, and in 2019 the number of green bonds issued worldwide nearly doubled to 479. A report by the Climate Bonds Initiative identifies $1.45 trillion in climate-aligned bonds currently outstanding that have been issued since 2005 and estimates that $350 billion in green bonds will be issued by the end of 2020. In short, there is a substantial supply of available capital.

Traditionally, green finance tends to focus on direct projects such as renewable energy, battery storage, sustainable agriculture, and fisheries management. However, to make progress with the energy transition, some of these funds must be directed toward oil and gas industry-related projects. Projects in the United States can focus on reducing emissions and flaring, plugging abandoned wells, performing carbon capture and storage, and increasing efficiency in the field, helping America produce the cleanest oil and gas in the world. Certification and global marketing of U.S. oil and gas as clean would further aid the energy transition.

ESG performance by oil and gas producers can further verify performance and enhance the value of U.S. energy commodities. Further downstream, U.S. refineries and chemical plants, using green financing tools, could take important steps to reduce GHG emissions and increase efficiencies and environmental performance. New opportunities like hydrogen could be part of the mix as well.

As the cleanest oil and gas producer in the world, the United States is positioned to provide the world with plentiful clean energy through LNG exports. The opportunity is underscored by the fact that electricity and heat production constitute the largest source of GHG emissions, at 25% of all emissions, with coal comprising about 40% of global electricity generation and coal-fired electricity on the rise in China, India and Indonesia, the three largest countries in Asia.

Sustainable investors keen on investing in projects and activities that reduce GHG emissions are no doubt evaluating opportunities to invest in bringing the cleanest LNG to the developing world.

Green funds and green bonds can play a role in making this happen, as can development banks like the World Bank and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.

Recent developments have highlighted this approach. For example, in 2017, Repsol became the first major fossil fuel company to utilize green bonds to reduce GHG emissions. It received 500 million euros through a bond issuance that funded upgrades at its refinery and chemical facilities in

Spain and Portugal, resulting in increased efficiency and lowered GHG emissions using innovative technologies. Repsol applied an integrated ESG approach to its operations, and a Green Bond committee oversaw the project and selected the funded activities.

Such projects can be repeated in the United States and globally.

An energy system built on natural gas, renewable energy, and hydrogen facilities can help meet future energy needs and support the retirement of existing coal-fired plants when feasible. The United States has the gas supply, LNG facilities and renewable energy technology to make this vision a reality. The combination of green financing, U.S. technology, and clean natural gas can help build and support the LNG regasification, pipeline and electricity infrastructure at the demand sources needed to make it happen.

As the cleanest oil and gas producer in the world, the United States is positioned to provide the world with plentiful clean energy through LNG exports

About the author: Jack Belcher joined Cornerstone in 2019 with over 25 years of experience in energy and energy policy. As senior vice president of Cornerstone Energy Solutions, he provides strategic and tactical advice to energy and transportation companies and financial institutions, focusing on government relations, regulatory affairs, public policy, strategic communications, situational risk management, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. Jack also serves as managing director of the National Ocean Policy Coalition.

About the author: Brent Greenfield serves as Vice President and Counsel at Cornerstone Energy Solutions. He provides clients with strategic policy and management guidance, research, analysis and communications support across the upstream, midstream, and downstream segments of the energy industry. In addition, Brent serves as executive director of the National Ocean Policy Coalition, an organization of members representing sectors including energy, fishing, waterborne transportation, construction, agriculture, and critical infrastructure.

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INDUSTRY

Texas Tech: The Energy University By: Bill Keffer

one. The energy-related course offerings continue to expand in number and improve in quality of content and instructor. We offer two levels of oiland-gas law (basic and advanced) that I teach; but we also offer a course in wind law taught by the “father” of wind law in Texas, Rod Wetsel. Wetsel also teaches a very important course in mineral title, a skill set that is becoming harder to find in lawyers but that is becoming only more valuable, given the increasing number of wind and solar leases that are taking up residence with oil-andgas leases. There are courses in energy law, water law, environmental law, and administrative law – all subjects that play key roles in an energy-law practice. We also offer an annual weekend “short course” in oil-and-gas lease negotiation and have offered short courses on other topics, like financing oil-and-gas deals, solar law and practicing before the Texas Railroad Commission and the Public Utility Commission. We are continuing to add more specialized energy-law courses, like one in oil-and-gas tax law; and we are planning to offer future courses in oil-and-gas transactions and electricity law.

Not only are we providing more opportunities inside the classroom, but we are also giving our students abundant opportunities outside the classroom. I lead my oil-and-gas law students on a two-day field trip to Midland every semester, which allows students to hear from local professionals about living and working in the MidlandOdessa area, go on a private tour of the incredible

We are well on our way to branding Texas Tech School of Law as an “energy” law school, and that initiative is now spreading beyond the law school, as we also embark on an intentional effort to brand Texas Tech as an “energy” university

About the author: About the author: Bill Keffer is a contributing columnist to SHALE Magazine. He teaches at the Texas Tech University School of Law and continues to consult. He also served in the Texas Legislature from 2003 to 2007.

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fter thirty years in practice with two law firms, an oil-and-gas company, and my own firm, there were two aspects that made the offer to become a law-school professor at Texas Tech in 2014 intriguing to me: one was the law school’s emphasis on wanting to hire a practitioner, rather than an academic, to teach oil-and-gas law; and the other was the law school’s desire to build an energy-law program. My immediate observation, and one that should be all too obvious to anyone else, was that Texas Tech School of Law should absolutely have an energy-law program, most especially because Texas Tech is geographically the closest major university to the Permian Basin; and the Permian Basin is, by far, the most significant energy-producing area in the world. In 2019, the Permian Basin surpassed the mammoth Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia in total oil production (even after having already produced oil for the past one hundred years). It also is a significant reason why Texas is far and away the U.S. leader in wind energy. Now, it is also home to an explosion in new, utility-scale solar farms.

Not only should Texas Tech’s law school have an energy-law program, but the school itself should be the energy-law school.

Over the past six years, we have built a substantial, intentional and practice-oriented energy-law program at Texas Tech that is producing well-informed, well-equipped graduates, who are continuing the proud tradition of Texas Tech School of Law by being practice-ready on day

Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, and cap it off with a site visit to active drilling and production operations in the area. I also lead students every semester on a local site visit to E&P operations in the Lubbock area. Rod Wetsel leads his wind-law students on a day trip to Sweetwater to visit a wind farm and operations center.

Wetsel also leads his mineral-title students on a day trip to Colorado City and Sweetwater to visit those courthouses and a local abstract office to learn more about how to run titles.

We also bring in leaders in the energy industry to speak in our Energy Law Lecture Series, such as Allen Gilmer (founder of Drillinginfo – now Enverus), Alex Epstein (author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels), Phelim McAleer (producer/director of FrackNation), John Walker (CEO of EnerVest), Todd Staples (President of TXOGA), Corey Goulet (President of TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline), Bill Magness (CEO of ERCOT), and Texas Railroad Commissioners Christi Craddick, Wayne Christian and Ryan Sitton. We bring in energy-law practitioners in our Nuts & Bolts series to discuss the countless opportunities that exist in this area of practice.

We are well on our way to branding Texas Tech School of Law as an “energy” law school, and that initiative is now spreading beyond the law school, as we also embark on an intentional effort to brand Texas Tech as an “energy” university. The first tangible step in that effort is the launch of a new master’s degree that started this Fall. The Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies (MSIS) in Energy degree program was created in direct response to the private sector’s desire for Texas Tech to offer a professional degree that is premised on an interdisciplinary curriculum that prepares energy professionals for the challenges of the future.

Students can complete three of any four offered modules to earn their degree. The four modules are in Oil & Gas, Renewables, Energy Law & Policy, and Energy Commerce. Each module consists of three courses taught by experienced Texas Tech faculty. Each module is offered during a given semester. All classes are offered online, allowing students maximum convenience and flexibility, along with two, in-person, on-campus weekend visits each semester, in order to permit students the opportunity to interact with their instructors and each other and make field visits to oil-and-gas and wind-farm operations.

The program offers a “rolling” admission, which means that students can join the program at the beginning of any semester and start earning their degree right then. It is priced consistently with other professional-degree programs, but it is the only one that offers such a well-developed, cross-discipline experience.

You can find out more information and see how to apply by visiting www.depts.ttu.edu/gradschool/Programs/energy/.

Texas Tech is the closest major university to the Permian Basin, the most prolific “triple threat” in energy production in the world. It only makes sense that Texas Tech should be the “energy” law school and the “energy” university. Texas Tech produces practice-ready graduates. Texas Tech students come to school to learn the energy business. Texas Tech continues to respond to what energy employers want and need in their employees. It is an exciting time to be in the energy business. The business might be changing, but it is only growing in importance. As author Alex Epstein says, the energy business is the business that runs every other business.

Energy illiteracy abounds, unfortunately, throughout our population, and even in our educational institutions. We tolerate that illiteracy at our own risk. To lead effectively on energy matters requires informed and educated leaders. At Texas Tech, we are building tomorrow’s energy leaders today.

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35

INDUSTRY

New Technology Transforms Natural Gas Into a Multitude of Useful Products

N

atural gas, a mixture comprising primarily methane and similar light hydrocarbon components, provides a relatively clean energy source for the United States.

Thanks to widespread deployment of horizontal-drilling and hydraulic-fracturing technologies in recent years, natural gas is recovered abundantly, so much so that the U.S. now exports its excess production. Unfortunately, cryogenic compression and long-distance oceanic transport to customer destinations are energy-intensive. Natural gas is often flared at wellheads because its collection and distribution are too costly relative to its market price.

Despite these limitations, natural gas offers enormous potential benefits if it can be economically exploited to yield high-value products in an environmentally conscious manner.

Currently, natural gas is usually burned for heating or generating electricity. Natural gas consists mainly of stable carbon molecules that resist conversion into other chemicals except by burning (combustion). Transform Materials has found a way to overcome this inherent stability so that natural gas can be converted into useful petrochemicals while simultaneously locking up carbon atoms that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. Through this process, the Transform technology co-produces hydrogen, a clean fuel source and a vital chemical for more complex reactions.

Transform’s system turns the methane and light hydrocarbons in natural gas into high-purity hydrogen and chemical-grade acetylene.

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SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

Hydrogen is a key ingredient for many industrial sectors, such as ammonia synthesis, oil refining, fine chemicals, electronics and metallurgy. Acetylene is an important and highly reactive precursor for producing high-value chemicals such as vitamins, fragrances and flavors, carbon solids (for example, acetylene black for battery and conductive polymer applications), and high-utility polymers (used for personal-care products and structural materials). In addition, a simplified version of the Transform system produces a lower-purity acetylene that is easily and efficiently collected for industrial uses, such as driving acetylene torches for welding and cutting metal.

Transform’s approach features a reaction front end and a purification back end, with its components directly coupled and fully integrated as a synchronized system. At the heart of the reaction, front end is a proprietary microwave-driven plasma reactor that converts the hydrocarbons in natural gas into the output products of acetylene and hydrogen, operating at low pressures and mild temperatures that provide inherent safety. The purification back end includes a series of modules that remove contaminants and extraneous products from the output streams so that the resulting acetylene and hydrogen are of extremely high purity. Transform’s highly efficient chemical conversion technology consumes minimal electricity, resulting in an extremely low variable cost. The overall hardware system is compact and modular, with corresponding commercial advantages.

Over the last two years, an initial 30kW reactor system has undergone rigorous testing and

steady operation at the Transform facility, demonstrating the technology’s long-term reliability.

Based on the encouraging results from testing this 30kW reactor and validating the purification steps required to produce fuel-cell-grade hydrogen and high-purity acetylene, Transform has constructed a larger demonstration system at its facility, comprising a 100kW microwavepowered reactor and associated purification modules. The demonstration system showcases Transform’s technology at commercial scale.

Tested and validated, the 100kW reactor can be multiplexed for customer installations, allowing copies of the full-scale system to be integrated with correspondingly sized separation and purification units.

The compactness and modularity of these reactors allow customized installations to meet varied specifications of commercial partners and customers. As an added benefit, the outflow of Transform’s system is easily managed, even switched on or off on demand, to synchronize with fluctuating customer needs, permitting just-in-time production. For smallscale users, a small-footprint plant is available that can be tailored for specific applications.

For more extensive commercial requirements, larger-scale plants can be constructed by taking a modular approach. No matter which size system is developed, projected capital expenditures allow rapid payback with attractive operating costs.

Further, this technology holds the promise of distributed manufacturing, obviating gas shipment in heavy cylinders and tube trailers over long distances, and greatly simplifying

TANGOAS/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

By: Dr. David Soane

production and deployment logistics. When powered by renewable energy such as wind or solar, the system can be operated as carbon-negative since the carbon component of natural gas is permanently trapped in solid or liquid end-products instead of being released into the atmosphere.

Transform’s process converts methane (or similar light hydrocarbon gases) into hydrogen with approximately half the electricity input compared to other hydrogen production methods such as electrolysis. With only methane and electricity as inputs, there are virtually no effluent impurities that require complex systems to remove so that a small-footprint system can yield high-purity products. This translates into a highly efficient technology that is cost-effective to operate.

Two operational features distinguish this approach from existing methods: 1. Transform’s single-pass conversion rate of over 90% and co-product selectivity of more than 95%, both achieved at high throughput, ensure efficient plant operation and costcompetitiveness.

2. Transform’s process can use feedstock from multiple sources in different geographies.

The most common is commercially available natural gas, but alternate sources such as biogas, coal-bed methane, landfill waste gas, flare gas, and others work equally well.

In fact, while methane is the most common feedstock component, most if not all light hydrocarbon gases can be added or substituted without plant modification, guaranteeing feed supply flexibility and reliability.

While other technologies exist for producing hydrogen and acetylene, there are important associated drawbacks. Current hydrogen generation technologies include electrolysis, methane steam reforming, and electric arc cracking: • Electrolysis consumes about twice as much electricity as Transform’s process. Electrolysis is presently under consideration for hydrogen refueling stations, but Transform’s scalable modularity and cost-effectiveness offer an attractive alternative.

• Methane steam reforming is a high-temperature, corrosive process that produces complex by-products, emits greenhouse gas, and is only cost-effective in very large installa-

tions. By contrast, Transform’s process produces high-purity hydrogen without need for byproduct removal in an efficient, economical manner for all installation sizes without producing greenhouse gas.

• Electric arc cracking generates a complex effluent profile and several toxic impurities that are difficult to eradicate.

Transform’s system yields a simple effluent profile (hydrogen and acetylene), with no toxic byproducts.

In the case of acetylene manufacturing, technologies include the carbide process, partial combustion and the Huels process: • The carbide process (with coal and lime as the raw materials) is extremely energyintensive, containing impurities from coal (such as phosphorus and arsenic) that accumulate in the acetylene and must be removed before downstream chemical synthesis. Transform’s process is energy-efficient, yielding a simple product mix (acetylene and hydrogen) that is devoid of complex impurities.

• In the partial combustion process, acetylene is collected as a byproduct of syngas production and is difficult to separate and purify. This process is only economical at large scale. Transform’s modular system is economical at all sizes, producing two highly purified gas outputs, acetylene and hydrogen.

• The Huels process generates a complex effluent, requiring multiple steps for separation and soot removal. It also is only economical at large scale. Transform’s economical, modular process generates two effluent streams, acetylene and hydrogen, ready for use without further separation or soot removal.

In summary, this exciting new platform technology can create green hydrogen and sustainable acetylene, each a portal to a multitude of high-value petrochemicals. To learn more, visit transformmaterials.com.

Thanks to widespread deployment of horizontaldrilling and hydraulicfracturing technologies in recent years, natural gas is recovered abundantly, so much so that the U.S. now exports its excess production

About the author: Dr. David Soane is a materials science expert with several pioneering technologies already under his belt, including CropCoat (crop protection), NanoTex (clothing), DuraFizz (soft drinks), and Cosmetica (personal care).

Now, he’s turning his attention to providing a green alternative to conventional technologies in the hydrogen economy and the petrochemical industry.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

37

POLICY

INSPIRING BUSINESS WOMEN JANE GIMLER

LOVE WHAT YOU DO

SHALE: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR COMPANY. ABC Texas Coastal Bend Chapter is the leading association providing the most valuable resources for the Coastal Bend construction industry, dedicated to our members’ prosperity and promoting the free enterprise system. We are the construction industry leader who is committed to developing a safe workplace and a high-performance workforce.

SHALE: WHAT INTERESTED YOU MOST ABOUT YOUR INDUSTRY? Their belief in the Merit Shop philosophy. They believe in the free enterprise system, the right to run your own business free from outside interference, rewards based on merit and freedom to compete for the work you want.

SHALE: WHAT DOES YOUR TYPICAL DAY AT THE OFFICE LOOK LIKE?

COMPANY NAME:

ABC TEXAS COASTAL BEND CHAPTER TITLE:

PRESIDENT

Well, since COVID-19 has hit our country, things have changed in our daily lives. Instead of face-to-face meetings, we have had to adjust to “virtual meeting,” which has been a challenge to some. And instead of sending mixer and event notices, we have to send COVID training and webinars. It’s been an adjustment. But we have been blessed that our industry and construction have been deemed “essential.” We have been open and trying to get all the important information out to our members.

Right now, we have adjusted our events and are still offering in-person and virtual training. I think this will be the new norm.

SHALE: WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR POSITION AND/OR INDUSTRY? That I get to have a voice. This industry is mostly male-dominated, and for the Board of Directors to choose a woman to run their organization means that they are open minded.

SHALE: WHAT ABOUT YOUR CAREER MAKES YOU MOST PROUD? One important part of my job is putting together meetings. Our members need help meeting someone with the “owners” big industry; it could be Moda Midstream, GCGV, SDI or member to member. If they make it work, and you see the end result of that meeting coming into fusion, that makes me so happy!

SHALE: WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUNG WOMEN INTERESTED IN ENTERING YOUR INDUSTRY? It’s very simple: Love what you do. If you don’t, then you need to move on. Remember the vision and stay true to yourself, and the rewards will come — I promise. If you want an easy job, this is not the position for you. I love my job, and I’m thankful every day.

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SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

STEPHANIE MONTAGNE SHALE: TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND HOW YOU GOT STARTED WITH CROWNEDCOUNTRY.COM. I was in the dental field for six years, and then when COVID hit, all the offices had to close. Opening a boutique had always been something I’ve wanted to do, but in my mind, it was something that was far fetched - just a dream. But then this year, little by little, it started to become a reality. I had already begun to get my license for the boutique, so when I was laid off, that was the final push.

SHALE: WAS BECOMING A FASHION ENTREPRENEUR SOMETHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO DO?

COMPANY NAME:

CROWNED COUNTRY TITLE:

OWNER/ OPERATOR

My father was an entrepreneur, so I had always grown up in that lifestyle, but fashion is always something I’ve always been passionate about. So, if I was going to pick any type of business, fashion is what I would have picked above anything else, hands down.

SHALE: THE FASHION INDUSTRY IS A BIG PLACE. HOW DID YOU KNOW WHERE TO START? I did tons and tons of research, and I actually had everything set up to go to market in Dallas before COVID hit. And when it hit, it shut down the market. So, I had to figure out a way to contact and reach vendors all online. So far, I haven’t even attended a market.

SHALE: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE HARDEST PART OF YOUR JOB?

I would say shopping is the hardest part of my job. I have to shop at wholesale vendors and buy everything in mass bulk. You can’t just buy one piece. You have to buy a massive box of one shirt in multiple sizes, and then just hope and pray that it sells.

SHALE: THAT’S A LOT OF PRESSURE. HOW DO YOU CHOOSE YOUR ITEMS?

Some of it is my personal style, things I would like to wear, and part of it is going outside my comfort zone. Sometimes, what’s trendy isn’t something that I would wear myself, but I know it would sell. And I try to keep a wide variety — clothes that are more fitted, more loose, casual things, and things you could wear to work. All ages shop with me, so I try to keep it very versatile.

SHALE: DID YOU HAVE A CUSTOMER BASE WHEN YOU STARTED? It started mostly with family and friends, and I have all the usual social media. It makes it easy to shop from there. You just click on the picture, and it takes you to where you can purchase the item. Plus, I use social media and email to let people know when we will be at events. That is one of the best parts of my job. I’ll go to an event, and someone will tell me, “I drove over an hour to be here because I saw you were going to be here on Instagram, and I wanted to come see you.” It’s humbling to know that someone would drive that far to come to a booth, but that is also what’s awesome about the job.

SHALE: DO YOU HAVE A STOREFRONT?

We don’t have a storefront. That’s not in our plans with everything that is going on. But we do different pop-up events. We have a couple of fall and holiday markets coming up. I always post on social media where we’re going to be that week.

SHALE: IN THIS DAY AND AGE, IT’S HARD TO STAND OUT ONLINE. WHAT IS IT, DO YOU THINK, THAT MAKES CROWNED COUNTRY STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD? The clothes that we carry are really cute, and they’re really good quality. I also try to keep everything very reasonably priced. Plus, we offer free standard shipping in the U.S. Most of the time, when people place an order, we have everything on hand. So, we can ship either the same day or the next day.

We also carry seasonal lines for different seasons and holidays. But once we sell out of those, they are gone. We won’t be ordering more until that season or holiday comes around again.

SHALE: WE UNDERSTAND YOU ARE ALSO A WIFE AND MOTHER. TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY.

My husband does marketing for the oil and gas industry. He is definitely the backbone of this company. He encouraged me to start everything, and he is at every pop-up show I do.

We have two boys, a seven-year-old and a four-year-old, and we are expecting our daughter in February. So, we have our hands full.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

39

MIRANDA JONES SHALE: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR COMPANY. BP is probably best known as a global oil and gas company. Earlier this year, a new strategy was announced to reimagine energy for people and our planet-and get BP to net zero.

This commenced a journey that will reshape our business in the coming years, transforming us from a global oil company to an integrated energy company focused on reinventing BP to deliver energy solutions for customers and create value for our shareholders.

SHALE: WHAT INTERESTED YOU MOST ABOUT YOUR INDUSTRY? As a child, my Dad and Grandpa worked in the industry, which piqued my curiosity. As I grew older, I gained a greater appreciation for how life-changing energy is. As a child, energy wasn’t always affordable for my family. I remember learning that there were over a billion people in the world who lived without electricity, either because of access or affordability. I know what it is like to wake up to a cold house because my Dad disconnected the heater because we couldn’t afford to run it. I recall visiting friends’ homes who only had Coleman lanterns to light their homes. These experiences are my motivation to provide safe, reliable and affordable energy in a way that shows care to our planet.

SHALE: WHAT DOES YOUR TYPICAL DAY AT THE OFFICE LOOK LIKE?

COMPANY NAME:

BP

TITLE:

VICEPRESIDENT HEALTH, SAFETY, ENVIRONMENT & CARBON

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SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

I am not sure there is a typical day, but one thing I can almost always count on is it will likely start earlier than I would prefer. On an “office” day, which could be at a BP office or working remotely, meetings can start at 4 or 5 AM, as we coordinate across global time zones. Prior to COVID, I regularly traveled to visit our operating sites and meet with our teams. I also prioritized meeting with our broader stakeholder community.

SHALE: WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR POSITION AND/OR INDUSTRY? Without a doubt, the common thread across every position I have held and every company I have worked for is great people.

SHALE: WHAT ABOUT YOUR CAREER MAKES YOU MOST PROUD? I am going to sound a bit repetitive here, but again, it comes down to the people. I am most proud to serve with the great people in this industry. I have been humbled by great friendships and have learned so much from the people in this industry.

SHALE: WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUNG WOMEN INTERESTED IN ENTERING YOUR INDUSTRY? For young women and anyone interested in the energy industry: Keep an open mind, be a listener, seek out learning, have empathy for others, embrace change, honor yourself in your choices, and trust your gut.

JENNIFER McINTYRE SHALE: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR COMPANY.

NMW LLC. is a woman-owned and operated Oil and Gas sales and operations consulting company. We specialize in contract sales, operations and administrative services to clients. Some of our clients include: JGK/Firestone Energy — union and non-union construction and reclamation, L and L Pipeline — mainline pipeline construction, Roughcut Oil and Gas — roustabout and hydro-vac cleaning, Bluewater Energy — oilfield trucking, PPC Lubricants — Shell lubricants, Navigator — wireline and directional drilling services. My mentor, now partner, Ellen Montgomery and myself have over 40 years of combined experience in oil and gas.

SHALE: WHAT INTERESTED YOU MOST ABOUT YOUR INDUSTRY?

Like many in the industry, I didn't set out to work in the oilfield; the oilfield found me. Working in corporate relocations, I got to know many of the players moving to the area when Marcellus and Utica really started picking up. I pride myself on always going above and beyond, that's how you are remembered, and I was soon asked to bring that drive and work ethic out into the field.

SHALE: WHAT DOES YOUR TYPICAL DAY AT THE OFFICE LOOK LIKE?

COMPANY NAME:

NMW LLC TITLE:

MANAGING PARTNER

No two days are ever the same. I am very involved in many of our local charitable, industry-based organizations. I sit on the board for the Appalachian Pipeliners Association as the Director of Membership, and the Appalachian Chapter of the American Association of Drilling Engineers as Marketing Chair, and am Secretary for the Pittsburgh Chapter of Oilfield Connections International. So, one day I could be organizing/running a clay shoot or networking luncheon to raise funds for scholarships; the next day, I could be walking a ROW for a bid walk or jumping in my truck at 1 am to help a pressing situation in the field. That's one of the things I love most, the variety, spontaneity, and challenges. Bottom line, the less I'm in my "office," the better job I am doing for my clients and customers.

SHALE: WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR POSITION AND/OR INDUSTRY?

I love being self-employed. No boss in this world will hold me as accountable as I hold myself. Failure and/or poor service are not options. My love of the industry resides strictly with the people. I have spent more time with my colleagues, clients, and friends in the field than I have my family at times. So much so that they have become just an extension of my family. I truly believe there is no other industry as passionate, loyal, and hard-working as the oilfield.

SHALE: WHAT ABOUT YOUR CAREER MAKES YOU MOST PROUD?

I have come a long way, personally and professionally. I have been blessed in recent years to be able to mentor several other young women entering our industry. It can be a hard, mean world out there, but young women must be warriors and learn that the only thing that makes a dream impossible is the fear of failure. Do not fear failing; failure builds character, and I promise you, fail once, and you will never want to repeat the mistake again. Learn from it, and move on.

I think I am most proud that my children have grown up with such a strong work ethic. Mom working as hard as she has; missing birthdays, holidays, and the occasional sporting event means that the family can live happily. Hard work and hard work alone brings success. My saying, "Hustle and heart will set you apart.”

Work hard, and give harder.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

41

POLICY

IER: 6 Foundations Funneling Big Money to the Anti-Fracking Movement By: Thomas Pyle, President, Institute for Energy Research (IER)

While the rise in rhetoric has been clear, the purpose has not been – until now. The reason is simple. There’s big money in working to kill reliable energy.

For example, in the 2020 election cycle, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and its green, left affiliates shifted $5,356,912 to support the Biden campaign. But where did LCV’s deep pockets come from? The Institute for Energy Research’s Big Green, Inc. database, a project that tracks the grants made by leftwing foundations on energy and environment issues, reveals 107 different energy and environment grants funneled from large foundations to the LCV and its state-based affiliate organizations.

So, who are the foundations bankrolling the LCV? There’s a clear connection between the large foundations that we track and policy and politicians that create real problems for our energy industries. Because of this, it’s essential that we pay close attention to the movements of money across this web, from large foundations to large environmental organizations to projects, outreach and politicians that undermine our energy future.

Of the 17 foundations that Big Green, Inc. tracks, the Park Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Schmidt Family Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, William Penn Foundation and the Tides Foundation have done the most damage. These six foundations alone have poured more than $100 million into shutting down fossil fuels where they can and regulating them into submission where they cannot shut them down. Their plans work best where they are least seen. The more attention they receive, the less effective they become. Big Green, Inc. uncovered these foundations’ activities from 2007 until 2017, the most recent 990 tax data available when the last update occurred. Now that 2018 data is available, an update is forthcoming. Here’s just a glimpse of what they’ve been up to: (continued on page 43)

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SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

There has been a massive increase in the size and scope of opposition to oil and gas in recent years

About the author: Thomas J. Pyle is president at the Institute for Energy Research, a non-profit energy policy think tank.

JOHN/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

T

here has been a massive increase in the size and scope of opposition to oil and gas in recent years.

The calls for a fracking ban have come from every part of the left — from Bernie Sanders’ bill in January to ban all onshore and offshore fracking by 2025, to calls from Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer and Jay Inslee, Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard, to a climax of Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden’s obfuscation of his position by making constantly self-contradictory comments. Several times and in several ways, Biden has stated he supports ending the use of fossil fuels and “transitioning” from oil and gas. He’s even called oil executives criminals and advocated they be put behind bars. And of course, his running mate, Kamala Harris, who during her own short-lived presidential campaign run, said during a CNN town hall that, “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

• Park Foundation: $7,827,729 in grants opposing oil and gas activity. These grants included $65,000 to the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York for a “[s]tatewide anti-fossil fuel and renewable energy initiative” and grants to various organizations “For New Yorkers Against Fracking.”

• Schmidt Family Foundation: $11,347,000 in grants on oil and gas issues. These include $50,000 to Columbia Riverkeeper, “[t]o support the fighting gas export project” and $75,000 to Food and Water Watch, “[t]o support the work on a fracking ban.”

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MAY/JUNE 2018

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»

• Heinz Endowments: $18,698,800 in grants against oil and gas activity to extreme environmental organizations like Fractracker Alliance, Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund.

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• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: $69,287,466 in grants to support anti-oil and gas projects. This includes two grants, “For the moving beyond oil project” to the New Venture Fund, one for $1,100,000, and one for $500,000. It also includes $280,000 to Western Resource Advocates, “[f]or a project to prevent shale development in the Rocky Mountain West.”

• William Penn Foundation: an additional $6,809,911 on similar projects as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

• Tides Foundation: an additional $6,182,183. This includes grants to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, including one for $150,000 to “To support the Sioux Tribe’s Standing Rock opposition against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).”

And that’s just what’s publicly listed and what we found for oil and gas specific grants. Rest assured, there is more happening in the shadows.

By tracking the grantmaking of these foundations, we are able to draw important connections, like seeing which foundations feed into LCV’s support of the Biden campaign. These connections allow us to understand these organizations’ goals, and they may help us unravel the web they create to confuse our energy policies at the federal, state, and local levels.

@shalemagazinetexas Shale Oil & Gas Business Magazine @shalemag

OTHER SERVICES OFFERED BY SHALE MAGAZINE Branding / Web Production / Search Engine Optimization / Ad Design / Social Media Video Production / Public Relations / Email Marketing / Campaign Strategy / Direct Mail SHALE Magazine is a statewide industry publication that showcases the significance of the South Texas petroleum and energy market. SHALE’s mission is to promote economic growth and business opportunities that connect regional businesses with oil and gas companies. The publication supports market growth through promoting industry education and policy, and its content includes particular insight into the development of the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin plays and the businesses affected.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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POLICY

COVID, Cloudy Days and Chicken Fried Steak By: David Porter

C

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VID-19 have given even more reason to not purposely inflict harm on one of the most productive sectors of our economy. Now is the time to spend less producing energy rather than more.

The United States became number one in oil and natural gas production, and this boost to employment and reduction in the trade deficit was a large factor in our economic success over the last decade.

From time to time, l like to highlight certain nonprofit organizations that have interesting information, and today I would like to introduce you to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow or “CFACT.” Their stated purpose is to “enhance the fruitfulness of the earth and all of its inhabitants” through four main strategies: Prospering Lives, Promoting Progress, Protecting the Earth and Providing Education. This organization has lots of interesting information on its website www.cfact.org, including some educational podcasts and a store with many books and two movies they have produced, “Climate Hustle” and the recently released “Climate Hustle 2” hosted by Kevin Sorbo of Hercules fame. If you are interested in energy, natural resource and environmental issues, I strongly urge you to check out this organization and its website. It’s not the same ole leftwing drivel that the mainstream media and tech monopolists consistently push.

I’d like to close this column on a lighter note.

Next time you’re in a small oil patch town around lunchtime, drive up and down the main drag to scope out as many restaurants as possible.

When you see one with a large number of oil field workers’ pickups, then you’ve found the best place to eat lunch. This technique has led

me to the best chicken fried steaks I’ve ever eaten. You’ll increase your probability of getting a good meal significantly, and in these times, we especially need to support our independent small-town restaurants and businesses.

About the author: David Porter has served as a Railroad Commissioner (2011–17) and Chairman (2015–16), as well as Vice Chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (2016). Prior to service on the Commission, Porter spent 30 years in Midland, Texas, as a CPA working with oil and gas producers, service companies and royalty owners. Since leaving the Commission, Porter works as a consultant for oil and gas companies. He also serves as Chairman of the 98th Meridian Foundation, a nonprofit concerned with water, energy and land issues.

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OVID-19 has been a huge disruption to our lives as well as to the economy. The disruption of demand caused oil prices to drop precipitously, even below zero for a short period, a historic collapse in pricing.

The ramifications of this collapse to the economies of Texas and other areas producing oil and gas will be long-lasting and devastating.

Deloitte recently released a study titled “The future of work in oil, gas and chemicals.” The study predicts under their consensus forecast that 70% of the jobs lost due to the demand collapse will not be recovered by the end of 2021.

The devastation to the economy and the losses in tax revenue will be difficult to determine, and how bad it gets will ultimately depend on where prices stabilize.

Oil and gas communities such as Midland, Houston, Kilgore, Laredo, Tulsa, Lake Charles and the hundreds of smaller communities throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and the other energy-producing areas of the United States will not only lose many high paying jobs — they will lose a lot of the civic leadership and capital which made those places home for the folks that live there. While COVID’s devastating impact on pricing was a black swan event and attributable to a collapse in demand caused by another in the economy, not all the long-term damage to the oil and natural gas economy will be due to market forces. I predict that much of the future reduction in demand will be for political and ideological reasons rather than economic. Several U.S. states, as well as various nations, are mandating zero-emission vehicles and renewable sources of energy. If this made economic sense, there would be no need for mandates.

Governmental mandates, phasing out fossil fuel in the production of electricity in California, are a major contributor to the many electric brownouts and blackouts the state has had lately. California has created a situation in which a cloudy day can put at risk an economy larger than the United Kingdom’s — we don’t need this for the rest of the country.

The economic hardships exacerbated by CO-

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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POLICY

The Texas Legislature Will Address a Big Agenda During its 2020 Session By: Jason Modglin, President, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers

Tight budget session In July, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar updated the Legislative Budget Board, led by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, on the fiscal situation for the remainder of the state’s two-year budget cycle. The Comptroller described a decline of $11.6 billion in anticipated revenues for the biennium. The full impact of this was softened by approximately $4.1 billion in savings from both federal stimulus dollars displacing some expenditures and unexpected growth in the local property tax share which reduced the state’s responsibility for public education cost. His estimate reveals a net $7.6 billion swing from the $3 billion surplus the Legislature had at the end of last session to an anticipated $4.6 billion shortfall to finish out this two-year budget cycle.

When the Legislature reconvenes in January 2021, they will work to pass a supplemental budget, which the Comptroller thinks will be very manageable with the 5% cuts that agencies were instructed to make in Spring 2020, existing stimulus dollars and amounts in the Economic Stabilization Fund (ESF) to cover the shortfall. The next budget, for years 2022 and 2023, will be quite a bit more difficult than the one passed last session but the extent to which will not be known until he reports his Biennial Revenue Estimate the day before session starts. Importantly for the oil and gas community, the ESF, which is made up entirely of severance tax collections, will have an estimated $8.8 billion by the end of August 2021.

Cuts vs. revenue With that challenging tax revenue picture, there will inevitably be talk of budget cuts or the need to raise revenue. A top priority for the oil and gas industry will be working to make sure the Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have the resources they need to effectively do their jobs.

Both agencies have made tremendous progress thanks to the leadership of Commissioners Christi Craddick and Wayne Christian at the Railroad Commission and Governor Abbott and legislators in properly funding these agencies. More importantly, they have given them the tools to modernize their operations making them more efficient with the taxes and fees they raise from our industry.

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Take for example the Railroad Commission, last session the Legislature provided authority for 22 new oil and gas and pipeline safety inspectors; $26.9 million to replace antiquated mainframe permitting system; and $39.1 million to fund a robust well-plugging and site-remediation program according to a release from Commissioner Craddick’s office.

Maintaining this progress will be critical for industry because the best defense from any federal intervention in our state’s most important industry is a strong, robust state regulator.

Redistricting The decennial redistricting process will also be taken up this session as mandated by the U.S. and Texas constitutions. Very few items the Legislature takes up is more partisan or contentious than when legislators draw the lines for Congress, State Board of Education, state Senators and state House members.

On top of these challenging requirements, COVID has delayed the finalization of the federal census causing some areas of the state to take longer to report their final numbers which may delay when lawmakers ultimately receive their final package of census block data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Gun and Police Reform Outside of fixed obligations in passing the budget and reapportionment, lawmakers from both parties will be weighing in on two of the most polarizing issues today. The first, gun reform, is in direct response to two acts of mass violence in August 2019 in El Paso and Midland-Odessa.

These horrific crimes claimed the lives of 30 individuals, injuring 50 more and prompting immediate action by Governor Abbott to form the Texas Safety Commission which has taken executive action to break down some funding barriers and increase information sharing among law enforcement departments. Both the House and Senate also appointed special committees to draft legislation to implement these changes which build on the successful efforts made over the past several sessions to increase mental health resources and school safety efforts.

The second pressing issue is police reform. Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, protests have occurred in more than 150 American cities. Here in Texas, lawmakers from both parties will be supporting the law enforcement community to build public confidence by boosting training and assisting officers with expanded

Those arguing Texas and the U.S. should fully transition to renewable energy sources have offered no plan for how they will fund schools, roads and water infrastructure in the same way oil and gas severance taxes do

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T

he Texas Constitution requires the Texas Legislature to convene in Austin on January 12, 2021 at noon. Staying with their constitutional obligations, legislators must pass a two-year state budget and apportion the districts for Congress, State Board of Education, Texas Senate and House of Representatives seats as part of the decennial redistricting process.

Past that, it is an open question what will happen under the Capitol dome, affectionately known as the Pink Building, on how lawmakers will address these and other pressing issues. And for the public, what will be the level of involvement and participation for a process that relies on physical gatherings and face-to-face interactions with the backdrop of COVID concerns and restrictions limiting public access to the Capitol.

Here is a preview of the 87th Session of the Texas Legislature:

We look forward to working with the Legislature to address these issues. Oil and gas producers are natural partners with the landowner community and Alliance members want to see progress made here.

community responses to mental health, recidivism, and drug treatment. There will also be a substantial conversation on the use of force to protect both officers and the public.

Both policy areas may require additional funding to implement the proposals from lawmakers and it is likely they will turn to severance tax collections to jumpstart any initiative.

There is a precedent for this. Following the assassination of five Dallas-area police officers in 2016, lawmakers utilized $25 million from the Economic Stabilization Fund to outfit approximately 50,000 Texas officers with vests that can withstand rounds from high-caliber firearms.

Energy Agenda The energy agenda for this session will be to continue to keep Texas the best state in which to work and operate in the nation. Yes, we are blessed with good rock, but it takes the pipelines, people and policies to make sure that production can be brought to market. Look no further than New York or Venezuela to see good rock be spoiled by bad politics destroying natural resources and condemning private property rights.

First, associations, like the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers and others, will be working with lawmakers to avoid proposals to raise taxes, impose new or higher fees or shift additional regulatory cost onto the industry or mineral interest holders. The tight budget climate, coupled with the commitments made last session on school finance, will make the budget picture difficult but not impossible.

Texas oil and gas producers have single-handedly funded the state’s ESF and that amount in the bank exceeds the current projected shortfall.

The Texas oil and gas industry led this nation out of the Great Recession, and we plan to do so again out of the COVID Recession.

Moreover, if lawmakers are needing revenue, they should consider whether all energy sources are paying to the level of oil and gas producers. Renewable energy projects in the state do not pay a severance tax to the state like we must do. Those arguing Texas and the U.S. should fully transition to renewable energy sources have offered no plan for how they will fund schools, roads and water infrastructure in the same way oil and gas severance taxes do. For example, electric vehicles are currently not required to pay for the use of roads like gasoline and diesel vehicles must.

Finally, the energy industry is happy to join our friends in the landowner rights community to talk about reform to the eminent domain process. There is no question that the recent expansion of production across the country has led to more demand for pipelines across Texas. We have also seen substantial need for more power lines, highways and municipal infrastructure to deal with the rapid population growth Texas has experienced.

The demand for infrastructure has raised concerns by the landowner community that the process is tilted too far in favor of utilities rather than property rights. Balance is important and that is why oil and gas is one of several industries participating in the Coalition for Critical Infrastructure to put forward reasonable solutions to address specific complaints.

Specifically, landowners are asking for more information on projects, common easement terms, and the ability to resolve complaints with right-of-way agents.

Operational Concerns In addition to all of the above, the Texas House of Representatives will be electing a new Speaker of the House on the first day of Session to preside over that chamber and appoint new committee chairs and membership of the committees. Speaker Bonnen chose not to run for reelection.

This critical organizational challenge takes time and will have a profound effect on the shape of the Session as the House works with their counterparts in the Senate and Governor Abbott. As with the likely COVID restrictions, House and Senate leadership will impose on the operation of the Capitol.

Since March, the grounds have been closed to the public, though it is anticipated the doors will be open for the first day of Session. What we will find inside continues to evolve from plexiglass divided committee rooms to limitations on traditional gathering places crucial to interacting with lawmakers, staff and the public on the important issues before the Legislature.

The 87th Legislative Session will be talked about for a long time to come and this Texan is extremely grateful for the men and women that serve there in elected and nonelected capacities. As members of the Texas oil and gas community, we have an obligation to pay attention, stay engaged and carry on the important work to fuel our economy while employing hundreds of thousands of Texans who are invested in the health and wellbeing of this state.

About the author: Jason Modglin brings a wealth of legislative and regulatory expertise to the Alliance as its new President. For the past decade, he has been at the forefront of the most pressing issues for oil and natural gas, from Austin to Washington, D.C.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 ď “ SHALE MAGAZINE

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POLICY

U.S. Shale’s First 20 Years: A Story of Transformation and Resilience By: David Blackmon

W

hen honest historians — if we have any such thing left in America — look back at the first 20 years of the U.S. Shale business, I have little doubt that two overriding themes to describe the industry will emerge: transformational and resilient.

To say that this industry has been transformational is to engage in rank, an almost comical understatement. Shale, as a business, has transformed the domestic and global oil and gas industry; it has transformed the economies of several states, including those of Texas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and North Dakota; and it has transformed America’s balance of trade and domestic energy security picture.

As the new century dawned 20 years ago, natural gas prices were spiking into the realm of double-digits and the commodity itself was in short supply as the big, conventional resource plays of the 20th century were in decline, some on their last legs. Natural gas in America was in fact a scarce resource, one that had major users of it moving factories and jobs overseas and electricity providers looking to other fuel sources and subsidies for renewables to power the new plants needed to meet rising domestic electricity demand.

Major suppliers of natural gas were in the process of kicking off projects to build new facilities designed to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from overseas in anticipation that America’s demand for such imports would continue to rise into perpetuity. Even as the development of North Texas’s Barnett Shale was in its early stages, no one really believed that enough producible shale gas lay underground in North America to ever become a significant part of the domestic energy picture.

The picture for domestic crude oil as the 20th century came to a close was not appreciably better. The industry had suffered through a major price bust from 1997 through 1999 and was just coming out of it when 2000 dawned. The decline of the major conventional

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fields had created the same shortage of domestic supply that existed where natural gas was concerned. Thus, while prices were in a healthier range, that did not mean U.S. drillers were any better able to meet the nation’s energy needs, or even a majority of them, as the country was importing well over half of its daily oil consumption.

The conventional wisdom of the day said that the U.S. oil and gas business was, in fact, in a state of permanent decline. All of the big plays, the narrative went, had been found and exploited, and it was all downhill from here.

Boy, was that wisdom wrong.

Now, fast-forward 20 years to today and, even in the wake of two major oil price busts in the last five years, we see a domestic energy picture that has been completely transformed thanks to the shale revolution • Natural gas is now so abundant in the U.S. that the conventional wisdom is that the low price picture seen over the past decade will continue into the foreseeable future; • That long-term outlook for low natural gas prices has resulted in the return of billions of dollars of plant and infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the chemical, fertilizer and plastics industries that had been shipped overseas from 1970 through 2000 back to the United States, with hundreds of billions in future investments already on the books; • Natural gas-fired power plants have displaced so much coal-fired power over the past decade that U.S. carbon emissions have been lowered to levels not achieved since the early 1990s; • Essentially all of the LNG import facilities built during the early 2000s have been converted to facilitate the export of U.S. natural gas to other nations, and the U.S. now ranks as the world’s third-largest exporter of LNG;

• We have seen a similar transition on the oil side, as U.S. production has more than tripled in the past dozen years, since the advent of the development of the Eagle Ford, Bakken and the Permian Basin; • U.S. crude oil exports have been cut by 50% as a percentage of overall domestic consumption; • U.S. shale oil production of light, sweet crude has overwhelmed the capacity of domestic refiners to process that grade of oil, leading to the establishment of a major new U.S. crude export business. The U.S. stands today as one of the half dozen largest exporting countries in the world; • The addition of so much U.S. shale crude to the global market has led to chronically low oil prices to the great benefit of U.S. consumers who today enjoy historically low gasoline prices at the pump.

So, yes, “transformational” is a very appropriate word to use to describe the U.S. shale business.

With all of the transformation it has wrought over the past 20 years, the domestic shale business has also developed a high degree of resilience as companies have prospered and grown during the good times and devised strategies to survive during the downturns. As if the major price bust of 2014-2016 wasn’t bad enough, the industry has suffered the twin hits of COVID-19 and the Saudi-Russia price war during 2020 and yet continues to persevere.

Even as the price for West Texas Intermediate stalled near the $40 per barrel level beginning in August, we have seen the domestic rig count start to inexorably start rising again as companies develop strategies to get back to some semblance of business and maintain production levels that have dropped off by over a million barrels per day since March.

As the current price bust becomes increasingly drawn-out, the ability to take advantage of economies of scale has become more and more important in the shale patch. This has been especially true in the vast Permian Basin of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, which has been the focus of a flurry of major buyouts and mergers, starting with Chevron’s acquisition of big independent producer Noble Energy in late July.

The Permian-centric deals continued into September with the merger of Devon Energy and WPX, and on into October, as ConocoPhillips announced its acquisition of Concho Resources and the planned merger between Pioneer Natural Resources and Parsley Energy, both former cover story subjects for SHALE Magazine.

If growing bigger really is better in the shale patch, then a plethora of big independents with quality acreage positions in the Permian and other major U.S. shale plays remain out there looking for possible suitors. You can see some of them and their acreage positions on the above map prepared by Enverus: Those companies that don’t end up being a part of a merger deal that would reduce costs through economies of scale and eliminating redundancies will continue developing innovative new processes and strategies to get to the other side of the current bust — because that is what the companies in this transformational and resilient business have always done.

Shale, as a business, has transformed the domestic and global oil and gas industry

About the author: David Blackmon is the Editor of SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine. He previously spent 37 years in the oil and natural gas industry in a variety of roles — the last 22 years engaging in public policy issues at the state and national levels. Contact David Blackmon at editor@shalemag.com.

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Proposed DOL Guidance Broadens Definition of Independent Contractors for Oil and Gas Employers By: Annette A. Idalski, Kaitlin Lammers and Brian Smith

(continued on page 51)

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Care must be taken to ensure independent contractors are not incorrectly deemed employees in a legal proceeding or by the Department of Labor

About the authors: Annette A. Idalski is a shareholder and the National Chair of Chamberlain Hrdlicka’s Labor & Employment Practice. She may be reached at annette.idalski@chamberlainlaw. com. Kaitlin Lammers is counsel, and Brian Smith is an associate in the practice.

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I

ndependent contractors have long been a mainstay in the oil and gas industry. Given the ebbs and flows of the industry, contractors allow for much-needed flexibility. But, using contractors can sometimes create risk, particularly if the relationship is not handled correctly.

Care must be taken to ensure independent contractors are not incorrectly deemed employees in a legal proceeding or by the Department of Labor (DOL).

The DOL recently unveiled a proposed rule intended to further clarify whether a worker is deemed an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Analysis of the DOL’s proposed rule suggests that it will broaden workers’ classification as independent contractors in a manner favorable to employers in the oil and gas industry.

This article will outline the proposed rule and provide industryspecific advice for ensuring compliance.

The DOL’s proposed rule sets forth a multi-factor test of two “core” factors and three “guidepost” factors, with the ultimate inquiry being that of economic dependence versus economic independence. In other words, the proposed rule focuses on whether a worker is economically independent and in business for himself or herself or is economically dependent on the business with whom the worker contracts.

Significantly and very helpful to the oil and gas industry, the proposed rule clarifies that requiring a worker to comply with specific legal obligations, quality control and health and safety standards does not constitute the type of control that would render a worker an employee as opposed to an independent contractor.

This is an important and helpful clarification in an industry such as oil and gas, in which much of the work is of a high-risk, highly regulated nature where safety and quality control must be monitored.

The “control factor,” the first of the two core factors, focuses on whether the worker exercises substantial control over key aspects of their work performance. The “profit and loss factor,” the second core factor, looks at the worker’s exercise of personal initiatives, such as skill and business acumen, along with the worker’s management of investments in, or capital expenditure on, resources, including helpers and equipment.

Given that these factors are considered the most probative, businesses in the oil and gas industry should focus substantial efforts at ensuring they weigh in favor of an independent contractor designation. To the extent possible, businesses should ensure that workers designated as independent contractors choose their assignments, work with little to no supervision and can work for competitors within the industry. Additionally, businesses should ensure that independent contractors possess a demonstrated

history of skill and business acumen by, for example, contracting with workers who can show developed and long relationships with a number of different operators, using helpers and using their own equipment and materials, such as vehicles, computers and software, and other tools.

The three additional guidepost factors in the DOL’s proposed rule are (1) the amount of skill required for the work; (2) the degree of permanence of the working relationship; and (3) whether the work performed is part of an integrated unit of production.

Businesses are encouraged by the guidepost factors to engage independent contractors for highly skilled work requiring independent judgment and discretion.

Furthermore, under the guidepost factors, businesses in the oil and gas industry can put themselves on solid legal ground by engaging contractors only for projects of a defined time period. Engaging contractors on a project-by-project basis, as is common in the oil and gas industry, is preferable.

Finally, under the guidepost factors, if possible, businesses should strive to segregate work performed by independent contractors from work performed by employees. Sometimes, however, this is not possible in the oil and gas industry, and it is acceptable to use contractors to fill in the gaps for certain skilled positions when the market is cyclical and unsteady. This means that sometimes a business may have employees and contractors who perform the same job, such as directional drillers or drilling supervisors, for example.

Actual practice “in the field,” as opposed to theoretical possibilities or written agreements, will dictate whether an individual is considered to be properly classified as an independent contractor. For instance, a written contract alone is not sufficient but helpful. A worker must actually have a say in whether they accept a project or the number of projects they will perform. For this reason, it is critical to seek legal advice to determine that the actual practice of the business aligns with the recommendations of the new DOL guidance and the federal case law governing the particular state where the work is performed.

SHALE Mobile App Free to Download on iPhone and Android GPS-Enabled Directory Oil and Gas Survival Kit and More!

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BUSINESS

How to Engage Utility Workers and Increase Safety by 70% By: Cristian Grossman

E

mployee engagement is an issue for many industries that rely on frontline workers. But energy and utility companies face unique challenges when it comes to connecting with workers.

A widening skills gap and a growing labor shortage are adding up to a disconnected workforce.

In fact, only 52% of utility employees are engaged at work.

Job security is another contributing factor.

From plummeting barrel prices to COVID-19, the last decade has forced dramatic reductions in the workforce. According to Deloitte, oil and gas companies have lost over 107,000 jobs during COVID-19. That instability is mirrored internally with a disengaged workforce.

It’s well-documented that the level of employee engagement in an organization directly impacts business outcomes.

• Engaged employees are often self-starters, resulting in greater productivity.

• A high-performing workforce improves overall efficiency and boosts the bottom line.

• Engagement reduces the risk of accidents, which is important in an industry with many safety hazards.

Fortunately, low employee engagement can be remedied. Digital collaboration tools enable companies to focus on direct, transparent communication that keeps their employees connected, safe and supported.

For energy and utility companies that depend on distributed field teams, leaders must be sure to complement digital tools with: • Mobile-first communications: Frontline workers usually do not have access to a company email, but most have smartphones. A mobile workforce app, like Beekeeper, delivers information straight to your field workers, giving them access to health and safety guidelines, shift schedules, payroll stubs, SOPs, and other documents to keep them informed.

• Multiple communication touchpoints: Supervisors should take an omnichannel approach

Two-Way Communication Forges Connections with the Frontline

It’s time for oil and gas companies to stop the downward trend and build an engaged, growing workforce with digital tools for the 21st-century worker

Communicating with field workers is challenging. It is part of the reason that frontline employees have lower engagement rates. A mobile-first communication platform creates a two-way line of communication between the office and field teams.

These platforms offer utilities companies a two-way communication channel that allows field teams to be part of the dialogue. Through pulse surveys and direct messages, employees can share their experience, insights and ideas to contribute and collaborate. Having the opportunity to provide feedback makes field teams more engaged with the broader organization.

At Varo Energy, Beekeeper’s mobile platform connects and engages employees across Europe. Leaders engage teams from the bottom up, encouraging workers to submit innovative ideas for the oil company. They have dedicated streams (similar to newsfeeds) for both business and non-business communication. They build a connection between frontline workers and the main office with communication campaigns directly from the CEO. With COVID-19 check-in surveys and communication around procedures, Varo uses their mobile-first tool to ensure the safety of its entire workforce.

Eighty-seven percent of digitally-supported workers are more engaged and happier in their work. That comes from being connected and feeling valued. Strategic communication strategies help facilitate this process. For example, employee recognition can boost engagement with a simple shout out to workers in the field who go above and beyond their daily duties.

About the author: Cristian Grossman is CEO and Co-Founder of Beekeeper, a secure, mobile-first operational communications platform for frontline teams.

Beekeeper helps companies connect their distributed workforces to increase productivity and employee engagement. Prior to founding Beekeeper, Cristian worked for Accenture on high profile international projects in IT Strategy for the financial and public sectors.

Cristian studied Chemical Engineering and got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, both at ETH Zurich. Before moving to beautiful Zurich, Cristian was born and raised in an entrepreneurial SwissMexican family in Mexico City.

to communication with frontline workers. This should include sending push notifications through their workforce app, posting flyers in strategic locations around the workplace, and verbally communicating with field teams through regular standup meetings.

Here are four ways that digital communication can help companies build a safe work environment and cultivate a thriving workforce.

(continued on page 53)

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A Digitally-Enabled Workforce Attracts Talent By 2026, technology investments across the utilities industry will reach $35 billion. This is a move in the right direction for an industry plagued by a shrinking labor pool. Almost half of the oil and gas workforce is closer to retirement age, and so far, there is not a steady stream of skilled talent lining up to take their place.

Companies should consider distributing their investments to build a diverse technology stack. While automation, smart machines and robots create leaner, more efficient field operations, communication tools are an essential part of the equation and can help industry leaders rebuild their workforces and attract the next generation of utilities workers.

Millennials are now the majority of the workforce, and they want technology to communicate at work. With the growing popularity of STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in today’s educational institutions, one study has shown that 44% of millennials are interested in oil and gas careers. Companies should build on that momentum with communication tools that will attract new talent.

Boost Engagement By Upskilling Your Workforce As energy companies invest in Industry 4.0 technology, the nature of fieldwork is evolving. Now, in addition to a labor shortage, companies are also facing a skills gap due to the roles they need to complement a digital landscape.

The oil and gas industry will need to fill technical positions like data analysts, IT technicians, and remote equipment operators. The industry cannot afford to lose more workers, so leaders should prioritize upskilling their current workforces. They can create training content and distribute it over a mobile app so workers can easily learn the skills they need.

Creating opportunities for professional growth motivates employees and grows engagement as a result. Leaders can further support this engagement by promoting employees from within and showing workers they can move up within the organization.

Engaged Workers Create a Safer Workplace Because of tight deadlines, heavy equipment, and explosive resources, the fatality rate in oil and gas is four times the national average. Industry leaders are constantly searching for a way to improve safety for employees, and real-time, mobile communication can help. First, a workforce app can boost engagement, which results in 70% fewer safety incidents.

Also: • Workers can immediately message their peers and supervisors to alert them of hazards in the field.

• Frontline workers can swap shifts with each other to avoid working while tired and risk losing focus.

• As Industry 4.0 automates energy operations, a mobile tool can connect workers to the network, allowing them to work at a distance, away from heavy equipment and hazards.

• Safety documents can be stored in the cloud and accessed by every worker through their workforce app for fast emergency response.

• During a crisis, like COVID-19, companies can update workers on new protocols and public health guidelines.

For nearly two centuries, refineries have been employing workers. It’s time for oil and gas companies to stop the downward trend and build an engaged, growing workforce with digital tools for the 21st-century worker.

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BUSINESS

The Pandemic’s Impact on Employer-Provided Medical Plans By: Ann E. Murray

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ity to “wait and see” if medical costs will warrant spending the money to purchase COBRA is likely to increase net plan costs for 2020. It could also make it more difficult for employers, stop-loss carriers, and advisors to analyze claims costs as they budget for 2021, especially if the plan is self-insured.

Insurers of fully insured plans should automatically implement these mandates, but employers with self-insured plans may need to confirm that necessary updates are made proactively. In all cases, employees must be timely notified of the changes.

As for opportunities available to employers, health savings accounts (HSAs), health reimbursement accounts (HRAs) and health flexible spending accounts (FSAs) can be expanded to reimburse over-the-counter medications and supplies (OTCs) purchased in 2020 and later.

This change helps employees access available funds to pay for thermometers, cough or fever medications and other supplies needed by those suffering from COVID-19.

In addition, high deductible health plans (HDHPs) may pay for 2020 and 2021 telehealth services without jeopardizing employees’ ability to contribute to HSAs. This temporary suspension helps accommodate the need to social distance or quarantine during the pandemic.

To help those employees who may have failed to enroll in medical coverage for 2020, a second mid-year opportunity can be made available to add medical coverage or health FSA. Employers who wish to save employees from forfeiture of their health and dependent care FSA dollars due to cancellation of procedures and closures of childcare facilities may extend the grace period to use FSA funds, increase the annual FSA carryover, or permit mid-year changes to FSA elections.

Finally, employers can allow employees to change from one medical coverage option to another under their plan or drop medical coverage if they have found qualifying coverage elsewhere (perhaps through a spouse’s plan).

These optional changes can generally be implemented without amending plan documents until the end of 2021. Employers con-

sidering these mid-year changes should be mindful of the HR burden of allowing changes to be made at any time elected by the employee. A short “window” of opportunity may be easier to manage.

While employer-provided medical plans may not provide the same kind of dollar savings or attract the media attention that Paycheck Protection Act loans garnered, they could still have a meaningful impact on the workforce.

About the author: Ann E. Murray is a partner at Nelson Mullins in Atlanta, and she focuses her legal practice on employee benefits and executive compensation. She may be reached at ann.murray@ nelsonmullins.com.

UWIMAGES/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

T

he COVID-19 pandemic has created a “new normal” for employers operating in these uncertain times. In the realm of employerprovided medical plans (“plans”), several COVID-related mandates apply, and opportunities are available for employers to expand coverage and provide cost-saving opportunities to employees. If not done already, employers should work now with their brokers and benefit advisors to confirm their compliance for 2020 and 2021, and they should take advantage of available opportunities.

The most publicized mandate affecting plans is the requirement to cover diagnostic tests without charging the employee. Examples include certain testing approved, cleared or authorized by the FDA, tests not yet approved by the FDA under its emergency use application (assuming application was made and not denied), and state-authorized tests.

To increase cost transparency, test providers are required to post the “cash price” of tests on their website and charge this price to plans unless a lower price was negotiated prior to March 13, 2020.

Looking forward to the time when a vaccine becomes available, another mandate requires that qualifying COVID-19 vaccines and treatments (i.e., evidence-based items or services with an “A” or “B” rating intended to prevent or mitigate COVID-19 and immunizations recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC) also be covered by plans without charging the employee. This coverage must take effect within 15 days after the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force first recommends the vaccine or treatment.

Employers should keep in mind that while most deadlines for coverage change, COBRA continuation elections and claims appeals have been suspended during the pandemic period. This means an employee who terminated employment in April 2020 needs not decide whether to elect COBRA coverage until after the national state of emergency ends, which could be six months or more after the employee’s employment termination. This abil-

While employerprovided medical plans may not provide the same kind of dollar savings or attract the media attention that Paycheck Protection Act loans garnered, they could still have a meaningful impact on the workforce

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www.txenergyadvocates.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 ď “ SHALE MAGAZINE

55

BUSINESS

By: Helen Horyza

A

re you one of the scores of hard-working professionals whose career has been disrupted or eliminated? If so, you are on the front end of a career change. Contemplating your unknown future can trigger a flood of emotion. You might be angry, anxious or a little of both. Guess what, you are normal.

You are at a major life crossroads.

Knowing where to start can pull you off the emotional rollercoaster and get you moving in a positive direction. Here are three tips for launching your reinvention: Step into a Period of Focused Introspection While your anxiety is warranted, it clouds your ability to navigate this transition wisely. Take some time to self-reflect. Curb your impulse to update your resume and scour the listings on job sites.

There will be time for that soon enough. Right now, tamp down your cortisol levels and get some blood flowing to your brain.

Take a long walk, ideally in nature. Even if you are slammed with a long list of things to do, breakaway, and make yourself a priority. Your career pays for everything in your life. It needs your attention.

As you walk, breathe deeply. Let as much tension go as possible. Start calmly thinking about your situation. Mentally take stock of your assets. Your first thoughts might be financial, and that’s ok, but also notice your health, friendships, family, your living situation … anything you can identify that is stable.

This will help ground you.

Get Clear About Your Natural Talents As change swirls around you, the one thing that remains stable is you and what you are gifted to do.

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Envision a talent suitcase that holds all of your core skills, acquired experience, knowledge, values and temperament. Now it is the time to open that suitcase and get intimately familiar with its contents.

An important resource at this juncture is a solid career assessment. In my book “Elevate Your Career: Live a Life You’re Truly Proud Of,” I include a coupon to take an assessment I developed called Elevations at no cost. Elevations is a self-discovery process that illuminates your career capabilities and interests. Your assessment results will help clarify what’s next and will boost your self-esteem.

Your Elevations report outlines your career-related values, enjoyable skills, interests and temperament. You will see a pattern form as you look at your results. Get curious about new industries or fields that could utilize your talents. Pay special attention to your interests as they provide concrete direction toward your next opportunity.

Define Your Past Identity and Your Future Vision A career change requires an identity shift. You benefit consciously by doing this. A big part of your self-worth is likely wrapped up in your former role or occupation. It’s time to acknowledge the past and begin to design your future.

Notice how you defined yourself in the past. What makes you feel competent, rewarded and successful? Now begin to envision your future. It’s more than a job title. Think about the contributions you want to make, the level of income you want to achieve and the balance between your career and personal life. Plan to make improvements, so your future is a substantially better version of yourself.

What you want to do and how you want to do it are both on the table. Traditional employment, contract employment or self-employment are options. You are the CEO of your career.

If you have long dreamed of being your own boss, now might be the time. If you have yearned to relocate, more and more employers are ditching the requirement for you to come to the office. New doors are opening in this pandemic labor market.

Courage is the fuel that drives successful career changes. Follow a clear process and learn the psychological stages that accompany career transitions. Reach out for support from your champions and your sparring partners. Access all the resources at your disposal and step into a bright future, one which genuinely makes you proud.

About the author: Helen Horyza recently released “Elevate Your Career: Live a Life You’re Truly Proud Of.” This timely resource brilliantly demonstrates how you can design a career aligned with your interests and talents by discovering what makes you truly happy. You can also take a deep dive into Helen’s expertise by visiting her YouTube channel.

SERGEY NIVENS/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Steps to a Career Change in Difficult Times

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BUSINESS

How Will Retirement Change Now That Women Are Taking Charge?

FOUR KEY IDEAS THAT WILL TRANSFORM RETIREMENT FOR EVERYONE By: Erica Baird and Karen E. Wagner, Co-Founders of Lustre.net

I 1.

You have a third of your life ahead of you. Take charge. Retirement looms large, and then it hits hard. But don’t let it overwhelm you. Remember, it’s not the end: it’s the beginning of an amazing new adventure. We have worked for decades; we know what to do. Take charge. We have built a strong foundation for taking on new challenges. We were trailblazers before. If we embrace this new paradigm, we can blaze a new trail again — blasting through tired and outdated stereotypes about retirement and age. Make people see you for who you are — vibrant and vital and far from done.

2.

You are still you. Like us, you probably worked hard to create your identity as a modern working woman. Now, without a job, who are you? Like us, you may have an identity crisis. It took us a while to remember we were still who we had been the day before we retired. So are you. Remember your many assets, fight the negatives and define yourself by what you choose to do next.

3.

Your age gives you power. Are you uneasy about being in your 60s or 70s and outside the workforce? Do people act as if you, an older woman without a career, are no longer relevant? Don’t listen to them. Use your wisdom, confidence and experience to challenge those stereotypes. Being without a job is destabilizing but also liberating. You are no longer in the race — you have arrived. Now you can use your powers to change retirement.

4.

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Find your new purpose. Purpose has been important in all of our lives — the purpose we found in our jobs, the purpose we found in our families, the purpose we found in living each day. Purpose is still important. Purpose will keep us visible, valued and engaged in the world. In the olden days, when retirement lasted for a few years, purpose did not play a central role. In the new paradigm, our runway is long, and purpose is key. Think hard about what you value and how you might want to be involved in advancing that cause. Then get engaged — one step at a time. It might take time and some strategic thinking, but we have lots of both.

SHALE MAGAZINE  NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

About Lustre.net: Lustre.net is an online forum founded by Erica Baird and Karen Wagner, two New York City retired attorneys. Together, Baird and Wagner are on a mission to redefine retirement for modern career women by confronting outdated concepts, defying stereotypes and raising our collective voices to ensure that retirement for all of us is shaped by women, for women. Baird and Wagner want women to “tap into our experiences and passions, forge new identities and find a new purpose — and pass on what we know to the next generation.”

MONKEY BUSINESS/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

n the 1960s and 70s, working girls came out in force. They began careers in greater numbers than ever before, breaking through stereotypes and barriers to become an essential part of the economy. They changed how workers looked, thought and acted. We were two of them.

Now, we are all beginning to retire.

We are very different from the retirees of the 1950s. We are women. We have a long runway ahead. We lived and worked in the wider world, and we don’t want to give it up. We are thrilled to reboot, but we do not plan to spend the next third of our lives in rocking chairs or playing golf.

We have no role models. We, those of us in the first big wave of career women, are the role models. We are at the forefront of a vibrant group of women who have a new vision for retirement. We needed a place to share cutting edge ideas devoted to redefining the next stage of our lives. So, after we retired from successful legal careers, we co-founded Lustre.net, an online community for modern career women.

Here are four key action strategies we have drawn from our own experiences:

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THE HOLIDAYS ARE ALMOST HERE. Whether you plan to stay home and cook some hearty comfort food or are looking to get out of the house, see the countryside, and find the perfect bottle of wine — we have you covered.

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"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well."

– Virginia Woolf

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

63

LIFESTYLE

RAISE A GLASS TO TEXAS’ TOP WINE COUNTIES By: Brenda Ryan

W

ould you like to see a wine list? Not a list of wines, but a list of Texas counties where you’ll find the best wines. Oil isn’t the only thing flowing in the Lone Star State. Austin happens to be home to some of the top wine counties outside California.

The Texas Hill Country is where you’ll find some of the country’s best vino, and even in this time of COVID-19, it’s well worth the weekend or day trip.

Looking for the perfect gift for a wine aficionado? Give him or her a bottle of Texas wine. Or better yet, wrap up a gift certificate for a wine getaway for your favorite couple. And, while you’re at it, give yourself a taste of Texas, too.

Here’s a sampling of Texas’ top wine counties along with some of the most popular wineries

Wanderlust Wine Company

Texas Hills Winery

Travis County

Travis County is home to the capital of Texas — and one of three Texas counties to make the Top 20 list of the best wine counties outside California. A quick search will turn up a couple of dozen places that serve wine in Travis County.

If you’re looking for the full vineyard/tasting room experience, you’ll find rows of grapes growing near Lake Travis and the Highland Lakes chain. But you can find edgier new wines inside Austin city limits — made in urban warehouses, served in a can, or better yet, wine slushies.

Tip: Wineries in Texas have been subject to some of the same COVID-19 restrictions as breweries and bars in Texas, so make a reservation online or call ahead.

Top wineries to try • Wanderlust Wine Company - 610 N. Interstate Highway 35, Austin, TX 78701 (956) 212-7848 • The Austin Winery - 440 E. St Elmo Rd A1, Austin, TX 78745, (512) 326-1445 • Texas Reds And Whites Tasting Room - 407 Red River Street, Austin, TX 78701, (737) 703-5540

Hays County

Tarrant County

Top wineries to try

Top wineries to try

Hays County is where you’ll find the Hill Country havens of Wimberley and Dripping Springs, where Texans like to vacation. But there’s more here than rolling hills and the rivers where visitors dip their feet. They also like to take a dip into the wineries in Hays County.

Hays County residents don’t mind if you stop and stay awhile and maybe sip a glass of viognier • Duchman Family Winery - 3308 Farm to Market Road W 150, Driftwood, TX 78619, (512) 858-1470 • Driftwood Estate Winery - 001 Elder Hill Rd, Driftwood, TX 78619, (512) 858-9667

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Best known for the stockyards and honky-tonks of Fort Worth, Tarrant County is also home to Grapevine. You can’t talk about Texas wine counties without including the town named in homage to the wild grapes that grew in the area.

The Christmas Capital of Texas, you see, is also home to the Urban Wine Trail, hosts the annual Grapefest in the fall, and boasts of being the headquarters of the Texas wine industry.

Main Street is jammed with shops full of holiday gift ideas and tasting rooms where you can sample reds and whites year-round. What are you waiting for?

• Cross Timbers Winery - 805 N. Main St., Grapevine, TX 76051, (817) 488-6789 • Bull Lion Ranch and Vineyard (with a Main Street Grapevine location planned), 8216 County Road 536, Hico, TX 76457 • Grape Vine Springs Winery - 409 S. Main St., Grapevine, TX 76051, (817) 329-1011

Sister Creek Vineyards

Gillespie County

Gillespie County — at No. 17 on the Top 20 list of wine counties outside California — may not ring a bell, but If you’re Texan, Fredericksburg certainly will. This charming town is one of the jewels in the Texas Hill Country crown, a vacation paradise replete with vineyards and historic appeal.

You’ll see the vineyards and tasting rooms on the road into town, welcoming visitors to sample wines or pick some peaches. Keep in mind: You may need reservations. Check out the website before you go to make sure there are no disappointments when you get there.

Top wineries to try • Grape Creek Vineyards - 10587 E US290, Fredericksburg, TX 78624, (830) 644-2710) • Pontotoc Vineyard Weingarten - 320 West Main Street, Fredericksburg, TX 78624, 512-658-0023 • Messina Hof Hill Country - 9996 U.S. 290 East, Fredericksburg, TX 78624, 830-990-GOLD

Comal County

Gorgeous Comal County rings in at No. 16 on that Top 20 list. Home to Hill Country tourist destinations like New Braunfels and Kerrville, the wine produced here is enough to make you say yes to a second glass.

Top wineries to try • Sister Creek Vineyards - 1142 Sisterdale Rd, Boerne, TX 78006, 830-324-6704 • Saint Tryphon Farm and Vineyard - 24 Wasp Creek Rd, Boerne, TX 78006, 830-777-6704 Give the Gift of Texas Wines and Wine Tours However you plan to celebrate the holidays this year, a glass of wine (or a bottle shared with your bubble) helps to ease some of the stress made only worse by the pandemic.

Just sip back and bask in the tree lights or the roaring fire.

Or give a bottle of your favorite Texas red or white to a loved one or friend as a tasteful gift. And in all of this craziness, giving a certificate for a weekend wine county getaway is a perfect way to unplug for a few days.

A final note: COVID-19 restrictions have changed hours and days — and many wineries require reservations to enforce social distancing and cleanliness. Those restrictions are also subject to change, depending on what local and state leaders decide. Check with the business before you go — and enjoy the fruits of the Texas Hill Country in a way that will make Napa Valley jealous.

Flat Creek Estate Vineyard and Winery Burnet County

The quaint town of Marble Falls in Burnet County depends on visitor dollars — and so locals roll out the red carpet when you visit the wineries and other attractions. Marble Falls is 58 miles northwest of Austin near Lake LBJ, in the Highland Lakes — perfect for a weekend getaway for two.

Top wineries to try • Flat Creek Estate Vineyard and Winery 24912 Singleton Bend E, Marble Falls, TX 78654, (512) 267-6310 • The Stone House Vineyard - 24350 Haynie Flat Rd, Spicewood, TX 78669, (512) 264-3630

About the author: Brenda Ryan is a former TV and radio newscaster and journalist who writes for LawnStarter.com in Austin. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, gardening, hiking, and visiting wineries around the country.

• The El Gaucho Winery - 21301 Kathy Ln, Spicewood, TX 78669, (512) 382-0620

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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LIFESTYLE

MUSHROOM BARLEY SOUP: TURKEY, CHICKEN, BEEF OR VEGETARIAN By: Kenneth M. Horwitz

W

hile “Deep Flavors” is a kosher-style cookbook, the recipes are eclectic, Tex/Mex to Cajun to Jewish soul food, to French, etc. This recipe is just one example, derived from a soup that my grandmother and Mom made, strongly influenced by ingredients available in Western Russia in the late 1800s. While it is somewhat different from what my great-grandmother would have served, other recipes, such as my Texas State Fair Blue Ribbon Mushroom-Spinach Lasagna, use regionally available ingredients in a unique and creative combination. However, all adhere to my goal of wonderful traditional flavor, and the soup ingredients, the barley, split pea, mushroom, and potato flavors, were available in Russia and are accessible to the American home cook while meeting the laws of kashruth. Variants of mushroom/barley soup (although rarely as good as homemade) are served in many Jewish delicatessens. As with other recipes in “Deep Flavors” (for example, Bouillabaisse à La Juive), this recipe is intended to be made in a kosher kitchen but is equally attractive to the nonJewish or vegetarian/vegan cook. It certainly meets the standard of “Deep Flavors.”

This classic soup is actually four different soups with a common theme but very different flavor profiles.

Ingredients: about 3 carrots, roughly chopped 1–1½ yellow or sweet onions, chopped 2–3 celery stalks, diced 1–2 cloves garlic, diced 2 tablespoons oil (canola or similar unflavored oil), mixed use 2 ounces dried porcini, trumpet, and/or chanterelle mushrooms 1 pound of fresh sliced cremini or white button mushrooms 2–3 quarts stock: beef, chicken, turkey, or vegetable as appropriate 1 teaspoon dried thyme 2–3 bay leaves 2 cups medium pearl barley 2 teaspoons salt, plus more to taste 1 potato, diced (optional) 1 cup dried split peas (optional) 1 cup lentils (optional) about 2 cups of the relevant meat (optional): beef, turkey, or chicken in bite-sized pieces First, it is preferable to have a quality and appropriate stock. For turkey soup (my personal favorite), a wonderful turkey stock is preferable, although a homemade chicken stock can be used. Boxed turkey, beef, and vegetable broths, among others, are now available. See the recipe for Roasted Turkey in Chapter 11 of “Deep Flavors;” turkey stock is a wonderful by-product of preparing a turkey. Similarly, for beef soup, a wonderful homemade beef stock is best. The same applies to chicken stock or, for the vegetarian version, a rich vegetable stock. Recipes for beef stock and chicken stock can be found in Chapter 6 of “Deep Flavors.” There are many wonderful recipes for stock in multiple cookbooks; Julia Child is a wonderful resource in this regard.

Once you have the stock, the recipe is incredibly simple, and the proportions flexible. For a 6-quart saucepan, sauté the fresh mushrooms in the oil until the liquid is rendered and evapo-

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rates with the mushrooms browned. Add the carrots, 1 to 1½ onions, 2 or 3 stalks of celery, and 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, all finely diced. Sweat, but do not brown the vegetables.

Dried porcini, trumpet, and chanterelle mushrooms, separately or mixed are intensely flavorful. You should reconstitute them as indicated in Chapter 2 of “Deep Flavors,” being sure to pick up and drain the mushrooms in a way that leaves the sand in the liquid to be settled and separated, allowing the sandy dregs to be discarded. Use a couple ounces of dried mushrooms. I do not use an Asian-style mushroom such as shiitake, wood ear, etc. in this soup — the flavor is wrong.

Add stock and mushroom-reconstituting liquid to fully cover the sautéed mushrooms and vegetables, being careful not to overfill the pot. Remember that like rice, each cup of barley will absorb 2

to 3 cups of liquid. Add the chopped reconstituted mushrooms, thyme, and bay leaves. Sometimes I dice potato and add it to the soup. Sometimes I add dried split peas to this soup. Lentils would be good in this soup but cook quickly, so they should be added late in the cooking process.

For beef soup, use beef chuck cut into 1-inch or smaller cubes. Brown the chuck before adding it to the soup, and be sure to deglaze the pot in which the chuck was browned to not waste the fond. Cook the soup for at least one hour before adding the barley for another hour — the chuck (if you are using beef) will need this total time to allow the meat to become tender.

Add 1½ to 2 cups of barley. Add a teaspoon of kosher salt for each cup of barley, plus more to taste as needed (remembering the other ingredients that need some salt). The barley takes at least one hour

THERE IS NOTHING MUCH BETTER ON A WINTER EVENING THAN ONE OF THESE SOUPS

to cook. Barley adds a wonderful flavor and creaminess to the soup after it has fully cooked. Al dente is not the goal for the barley here; you want it fully cooked. These soups are all seriously better the next day.

For the chicken or turkey barley soup, the meat cooks quickly. You can add diced-up raw chicken thighs or turkey thighs about a ½ hour before serving, while the barley should be added earlier at the same time as the vegetables.

Obviously, the vegetarian version has no added meat.

Note that before serving, you will have to reseason the soups with salt and pepper, and you may have to adjust the salt because barley and potatoes will absorb a huge amount of salt. However, be careful not to oversalt. Add water if necessary.

I serve these soups with pumpernickel or rye bread. The bread is delicious with schmaltz (see the recipe in “Deep Flavors”) brushed on lightly, sprinkled with salt, and toasted in the oven. These soups are a most delicious and ultimate form of comfort food, to say the least. There is nothing much better on a winter evening than one of these soups.

“Deep Flavors” is available, both on Kindle and as a hardcover from Amazon and on my website www.deepflavorscookbook.com.

About the author: Kenneth M. Horwitz, JD, LLM (Tax), CPA, practices as a lawyer in a general tax, estate planning, and transaction practice. Mr. Horwitz developed a creative and focused approach in finding and fixing problems, a skill that translates well to his passion for developing recipes based on traditional family favorites, tailored to personal taste and dietary needs. His desire to preserve and communicate that work led to “DEEP FLAVORS.”

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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SOCIAL

state of energy luncheon

women's energy network Women’s Energy Network (WEN) held an event on September 22 at the Omni Corpus Christi Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, to honor Judge Barbara Canales.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHALE

SHALE Magazine and In the Oil Patch Radio Show teamed up with Port of Corpus Christi to co-host the 2020 State of Energy Luncheon.

The event was held on September 22 at the Omni Corpus Christi Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas. The luncheon featured a special panel: Jason Modglin, President of Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, Brook Simmons, President of The Petroleum Alliance of OK, and Fahad Nazer, from the Saudi Arabia Embassy. The Keynote Speaker was Mike Howard, CEO of Howard Energy Partners, and the Featured Speaker was Sean Strawbridge, CEO of Port of Corpus Christi.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020  SHALE MAGAZINE

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