Oil and Politics Conference
Saturday, April 12 2003
Radisson Hotel, Junior Ballroom, Denton, TX
Sponsored by the Department of Political Science, University of North Texas
The "Oil and Politics" conference will explore the risks and problems confronting the oil industry. Local, regional and international politics are at the nexus of many of the most significant challenges confronting this vital sector of the economy today. Issues such as the "rule of law", political instability, security threats and international conflicts present significant problems in many of the most oil-rich areas of the world. Understanding the risks involved in such places and developing successful strategies to overcome them are key to all in the oil industry. The purpose of this conference is to bring together experts in all areas where oil and politics meet to discuss specific problem areas, such as negotiating contracts and arranging financial agreements, as well as more universal concerns regarding political risk analysis.
The "Oil and Politics" conference is a one day event sponsored by the Department of Political Science at the University of North Texas. As one of the preeminent political science departments in the nation with many well-known experts in international relations, the UNT Political Science Department seeks to bring together those who work in the oil industry and those who do research in it to better understand how, in these uncertain times, both academia and industry can profit from each other's experience.
Conference Schedule
8:00 - 8:30 am: Coffee and Pastry
8:30 - 8:45 am: Welcome, Dean Warren Burggren, College of Arts and Science at UNT
8:45 - 9:30 am: Dennis O'Brien, Director for the Institute for Energy, Economics and Policy, Sarkeys Energy Center; University of Oklahoma. "Political Risk Analysis in the Petroleum Industry".
9:30 - 10:15 am: Marlon Downey, former President ARCO International. "Politics and International Oil Exploration and Production".
10:15 - 10:30 am: Break
10:30 - 11:15 am: Tom Meurer, Senior Vice President Hunt Consolidated. "From Dictatorship to Democracy: Doing Business in Yemen".
11:15 - 12:00 pm: Robert Rendell, Partner Patton Boggs. "Financing Oil and Gas Projects in Southeast Asia: A Lawyer's View".
12:00 - 1:00 pm: Lunch. Remarks from: Prof. Emile Sahliyeh. Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of International Studies, "Prospects for Democracy in the Middle East".
1:00 - 1:45 pm: Ed Blessing, Managing Director Blessing Petroleum Group. "Ethics and Politics in the Petroleum Industry: Perspectives from an Independent Producer".
2:00 - 2:45 pm: Brendan Downes, Vice President Eastlink Lanker. "Risks and Opportunities in the former Soviet Union"
2:45 - 3:00 pm: Break
3:00 - 3:45 pm: Nick De'Ath, former Chief Geologist British Petroleum. "The Politics of Oil and Gas: Perspective from an International Explorer".
3:45 - 4:30 pm: Patrick Jenevein, President Tang Energy Group. "Emerging Energy Issues in Asia".
The cost of the conference is $30.00 and includes conference registration, continental breakfast, and lunch. As we expect a high turnout, please be sure to register early. The final deadline for registration is April 10.
Biographies of conference participants:
Ed Blessing is Managing Director of Blessing Petroleum Group. Prior to forming BPG, Blessing led the formation of Dallas-based Strategic Petroleum Inc., where he served as Director and Chief Executive Officer. During the 80's, Mr. Blessing led Blessing Petroleum Corporation, an independent oil and gas firm located in Oklahoma City. He served as executive vice president and director of Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Oil and Gas Company from 1978 to 1980. Mr. Blessing entered the natural resource industry in the late 60's, working for a decade as a Principal, Officer, Director and Advisor. In the mid 60's, after earning his MBA degree from the Harvard Business School, Mr. Blessing served as a consultant with McKinsey & Company Inc. in the company's New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco offices. He joined Shearson, Hammill & Company as a stockbroker in 1961, working in the firm's La Jolla, Calif. office. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Wildcatter's Fund, the Political Action Committee (PAC) for Washington, D.C.-based Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA.) He also chairs the IPAA's Prosperity Project, a program which is a non-partisan issue oriented political action program. Mr. Blessing was recently elected to the Board of Directors of BIPAC (Business-Industry Political Action Committee), where he serves on the Strategic Planning Committee. Other active memberships include the Dallas Wildcat Committee. Former positions include a turn as Governor of IPAA's North Central Texas Region and as Vice Chair for the association's Business Development Roundtable. He also formerly served as director of the Dallas Petroleum Club and as a graduate-level Adjunct Professor for the University of Oklahoma.
Nick De'Ath has had an outstanding career in international oil and gas exploration. For 21years he was with BP (British Petroleum), including Chief Geologist for the North Sea, General Manager in Colombia and President for Exploration in Mexico. In 1986 he opened the BP office in Bogota, Colombia and was instrumental in the discovery of oil fields there that were the largest discoveries in the Western Hemisphere for 25years. He also spent 5 years with Triton Energy in Dallas where he was responsible for building a global exploration portfolio. He was responsible for the initial exploration and appraisal of the Malaysia - Thailand Joint Development Area and acquired licenses in Equatorial Guinea which have recently yielded major discoveries. Mr De'Ath also set-up his own leadership consultancy in Loss Control and Crisis Management in Colombia in the early '90's, and has been a Director of Strategic Risk Services with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He earned a Degree in Geology from London University and speaks fluent Spanish. He has visited most countries in the world; lived in 8 and on his 25th wedding anniversary had lived in 21 different houses! He has published a variety of papers and given presentations to audiences from Senior Government representatives and heads of National Oil Companies, Industry Analysts and Technical Conferences. For commercial services to Colombia, in 1990 he was awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II. He is currently assisting an oil and gas start-up company in Plano.
Brendan Downes is Vice President of Business Development for Eastlink Lanker, PLC. Eastlink Lanker is a privately held investment and management company, with significant holdings in the Russian Federation. These holdings range across a wide segment of industry including banking, accountancy, industrial manufacturing entities and import/export companies. Mr. Downes joined the Oil & Gas Industry in 1982 and has held a broad range of senior management and general management positions for two U.S. based multi-national service companies, prior to joining Eastlink Lanker in 1998. He has worked and traveled extensively throughout the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan over the last ten years. He was responsible for some of the earliest Russian-U.S. service, equipment and technology exchange contracts, post Soviet Union. He has recently been nominated to the Board of Directors for a newly formed Russian service company, with operating infra-structure throughout Siberia created to serve the general Oil & Gas Industry. He has worked extensively and on behalf of Eastlink Lanker in the acquisition of companies in the United States, Canada and Russia. In his career, he has also been successful and directly responsible for business development in other countries around the world involving energy equipment and technology exchanges, including South America, Mexico and China. Mr. Downes and his company are active members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. He is also a member of The Society of Petroleum Engineers. Mr. Downes is a high honors graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts with a degree in Business Management. He also served in the U.S. Naval Air as air crewman from 1971-1976 in both active and reserve duty status.
Marlon W. Downey joined shell Oil in 1957 and retired thirty years later as VP of Shell Oil and President of Pecten International. After retirement, he founded Roxanna Oil of Houston, Texas. In 1990, he joined Atlantic Richfield, and served as President of Arco International until retirement in 1996. During his years at Shell and Arco, his teams invested in 63 countries, making important discoveries in 20 countries, with five developments larger than one billion barrels. On retiring from Arco, Marlan became Bartell Professor of Geoscience at the University of Oklahoma, and Chief Scientist of the Sarkeys Energy Center. In 2000, he served as President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Marlan was Chairman of the Symposium on Seals for Hydrocarbons, the Hedberg Conference on Assessing Risk in Exploration, the Symposium on Unconventional Methods of Exploration, the Pratt Conference on Future Petroleum Provinces, and The AAPG Washington Conference on a National Energy Policy. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has twice been AAPG Distinguished Lecturer, and served as Esso Distinguished Lecturer, and the Huffington Distinguished Lecturer for the Far East. He has published widely, but may be best known for his series of twenty four articles on the Business of Exploration, published in the AAPG Explorer. Mr. Downey was born in rural Nebraska, served in the US Army in Korea, and has three earned degrees in Chemistry and Geology, and an honorary Ph.D. He Marlan has been decorated by the government of Cameroon, was part of President Carter's team supervising the first free elections in Guyana, and was recently honored by the worlds largest geological society as "A Living Legend in the Oil and Gas Business". He received the R H Dott award for best AAPG publication and the Hedberg Medal for distinguished contributions in the field of international energy and education.
E. Patrick Jenevein III is President of Tang Energy Group. Patrick Jenevein serves as President of The Nolan Group ("Nolan"), NG Processing Company, and Tang Energy Group. Jenevein founded Nolan, in 1986, to enter the natural gas business. NG Processing Company, Inc. grew out of Nolan's gas gathering and processing operations. NG Processing Company, Inc. formed Tang Energy Group, in 1996, to build, own and operate energy delivery systems in China. Nolan, the company incubator, continues exploration, production, gas gathering and power generating activities in the United States and Caribbean.
Tom Meurer is Senior Vice President of Hunt Consolidated Inc., a large privately held multi-national company in Dallas, Texas involved in oil and gas exploration, real estate development, private equity investments and land holdings. He serves as a senior officer and director in Hunt Oil Company, Hunt Realty Company, Hunt Equities Company, and Hunt's land and agricultural company, AgHOC. Meurer is also a director of Perot Systems, Inc. He is also a director at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., the American Institute for Yemeni Studies and the Dallas Museum of Natural History. He also serves as Trustee for the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University and the Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation. He is a graduate of the University of Washington. From 1963 to 1968 he served as an officer in the United States Air Force. Prior to joining Hunt, Tom spent eight years with Electronic Data Systems.
Dennis O'Brien is John A. and Donnie Brock Chair in Energy Economics Policy and Director for the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy, Sarkeys Energy Center, University of Oklahoma. Under Dr. O'Brien's direction, the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy focuses on the global energy industry and its relationship with national and state energy industry issues and policy. The institute provides leadership and brings together the extensive resources of the University in business, economics, and energy sciences, as well as external resources to address the key economic, political, and social policy issues related to energy. In particular, the institute focuses on important energy relationships in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Central Asia, and their relationship with the United States and Oklahoma. Recent projects include major studies of oil and gas in Kazakhstan, Bulgaria for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, as well as executive management training for international delegations from Central Asia and Eastern Europe. was the international president (1997) of the International Association for Energy Economics, a global organization with 3,500 members in more than 60 nations. Prior to that, he was the President of the United States Association for Energy Economics in 1995-96. In addition, he has been advisor to the chairman of Caltrex Petroleum Corporation, and managing director of Petroad, which assisted clients in developing and implementing strategic business visions and planning for the global energy industry. Dr. O'Brien has held several distinguished positions throughout his career including that of chief economist and manager of the economics department of Caltex Petroleum Corporation. Prior to joining Caltex, Dr. O'Brien was the deputy assistant secretary for International Energy Security for the Department of Energy. He has also held tenured positions at California State University, Sacramento, and Truman State University. He gives an annual lecture in the Petroleum Executive Management Program at the Institut Petrole du Francais in Paris, and was adjunct professor in petroleum engineering at the University of Regina. In addition he has bee the principle interviewer on foreign and national security for the John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program (69-71) and Faculty Fellow, U S General Accounting Office. He serves on several international advisory boards and panels, including the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, University of Houston College of Business Energy Institute, American Graduate School of International Management, Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Robert Rendell is a partner at Patton Boggs and concentrates his practice in the areas of international finance, banking, and corporate law. Before joining Patton Boggs, Mr. Rendell practiced with Rogers & Wells in New York City. He served from 1973 to 1977, as Deputy General Counsel of the Export-Import Bank of the United States in Washington, D.C., and served for two years in the Office of International Tax Counsel of the United States Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. He was previously a shareholder in Johnson & Gibbs in Dallas, Texas and a partner in Vial, Hamilton, Koch & Knox LLP. Mr. Rendell is the author of a number of articles on banking and international finance, and is the editor of International Financial Law, which was published in London 1984. He contributes to and serves on the Board of Editorial Advisors of The International Financial Law Review, The University of Texas International Law Journal, and The Institute for Transnational Arbitration. Euromoney included Mr. Rendell in its 1996 Guide to the World's Leading Project Finance Lawyers. Mr. Rendell served as Chairman of the Section of International Law and Practice of the American Bar Association (ABA) during 1986-87, and as Chairman of the Committee on International Business Law of the ABA's Business Law Section from 1988-1992. He has lectured before the Practicing Law Institute, ABA National Institutes, the American Management Association, Euromoney Conferences, the Banking Law Institute, and the World Trade Institute on the subjects of international trade, finance, and banking. Mr. Rendell is an Adjunct Professor at the Southern Methodist University School of Law where he teaches courses on international business law and international banking and finance. From January to June 1992, Mr. Rendell served as Scholar in Residence at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California, where he taught courses in banking and international trade law. Mr. Rendell has served as Chairman of the Board of the Dallas Council on World Affairs, and has served as President of the International Trade Association of Dallas/Fort Worth. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Trade Resource Center and the International Committees of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and the North Texas Commission. He is currently a member of the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations. In July 1988, Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss appointed Mr. Rendell to chair the Mayor's Council on International Trade Finance and Capital Development. Mr. Rendell accompanied Dallas Mayor Steve Bartlett in November 1992 on a trade mission for the City of Dallas to Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. He currently serves on the International Trade Advisory Council of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce and the North Texas District Export Council. Mr. Rendell was recently appointed to serve on the Texas Department of Banking's Interstate Branching Task Force.
Emile Sahliyeh is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of International Studies at the University of North Texas. Prof. Sahliyeh received his Ph.D.from Georgetown University in 1979. He is the author ofThe PLO After the Lebanon War and In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967. He is Editor of Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World. Prof. Sahliyeh is also author of chapters in several anthologies on Middle Eastern politics,and of articles in Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, Journal of Palestine Studies, and Washington Quarterly. He has received a Ford Foundation research grant, a Woodrow Wilson International Center Security Studies Fellowship, a Brookings Institution Middle East Studies Fellowship, a Fulbright Research Fellowship, and a Rand Corporation Middle East Studies Center Fellowship. He lectures and consults widely on Middle Eastern politics.