If Brook Simmons had any reservations or doubts about taking over the leadership of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, he didn’t express them.
“I like to be optimistic,” he said in an interview with OK Energy Today, an interview conducted over the phone because of the new requirements caused by the pandemic. It was an interview that focused on what Simmons called the “new world” brought about by the coronavirus and what it has done to the oil and gas industry.
A few new drilling permits here and there have been approved in the state, but overall the numbers remain anemic.
“I like to call it the “green shoots” and I think we’re starting to see some green shoots with regard to rethinking what the new world looks like and putting plans in place,” he said.
But will the future and the “whole new world” as he called it, bring fewer independents and smaller companies willing to take the risk of oil and gas exploration?
“Some folks see it that way, but I think there are gonna be challenges with the industry regardless of the size of one’s company,” answered Simmons. “I don’t think we have a firm grasp yet—political risk might be placed upon operators and what that impact is going to be across upstream industry and downstream, I don’t think we know yet and what’s what people are trying to figure out.”
A recent story focused on a Dallas Federal Reserve Bank survey that concluded 66% of the oil and gas executives surveyed in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana felt that the U.S. oil production has peaked.
Simmons isn’t ready to be so pessimistic.
“I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but you have to remember we’ve been talking about this question of peak demand or peak supply for a heck of a long time. And none of those predictions have proven true. I would caution folks not to write off the industry and certainly not write off Oklahoma.”
He points to how the industry was written off 15 years ago, until old and new petroleum engineers “put their heads together and came up with solutions.”
“That is the kind of problem-solving and “get ‘er done” ethics that we have in the industry. We have not seen the end of that,” added Simmons.
We’ll continue our conversation tomorrow with Brook A. Simmons, the new President of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma.