During the holidays, I returned to my native New Hampshire, where the new snow was just beautiful—although it covered up the yard signs touting the presidential candidates. This was in the frenzied days leading up to the N.H. primary, so during a high school basketball tournament, candidate Dennis Kucinich walked in with a couple of aides. He made his way through the stands, shaking hands.

Like most of the candidates, his campaign literature promises to get us off foreign oil and be energy independent. Senator Clinton was running TV ads with a Christmas theme. On boxes near the tree, one gift tag read “Alternative Energy.”

Two days before Christmas, the Boston Sunday Globe ran an op-ed column, “America’s Energy Future.” The guest columnist was gleeful about the energy prospects of the coming post-Bush era, in which the new president will likely reverse many of the current energy and environmental rules.

Back in the Texas oil patch in early January, I was suffering culture shock. I didn’t know whether to eat Yankee pot roast or chicken fried steak.

One day, however, reminded me of my appreciation for the oil and gas industry. Within just 24 hours, I had the privilege to experience another kind of primary energy: I met with two legendary independents, one 97 years old and one 30.

The first was L. Frank Pitts, head of Pitts Oil Co. in Dallas. Since 1940, he has drilled more than 3,000 wells in North Texas—including some of the earliest Barnett shale wells. The second was Guma Aguiar of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who entered the business in East Texas’ Deep Bossier play in 2004 to form Leor Energy, and with a multibillion-dollar bang, just exited—at least for now.

What they have in common is intelligence, drive, the ability to recognize an opportunity and jump on it, and that certain something that makes them take a chance.

These men represent the full spectrum of the upstream business and they show how much it has changed over time. The more traditional Pitts persisted through the industry’s ups and downs, working with partners who became friends, drilling thousands of wells. He took advantage of technological advances as they came along. He fought for natural gas deregulation and better gas prices for independents. He was a highly visible advocate for it in Congress, on the National Petroleum Council, and in all manner of industry trade associations and public-relations efforts.

Aguiar represents a new kind of oilman, but one we are seeing more of these days. He shows what a person with business savvy, a few key employees, and a cell phone with the right phone numbers (but no technical background) can achieve. Yes, there was far more to it than that, and a lot of luck involved too, as he is the first to admit.

Interestingly, neither man set out to be an oilman. Neither has a degree in science, much less in geology, geophysics, petroleum engineering or land. At first, both viewed the business from the outside looking in, seeing it as an intriguing investment, not necessarily a career.

A week later, I had the honor to meet with someone who did start out as an oilman on purpose, armed with a geology degree from Texas A&M in 1940: George Mitchell, founder of Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. and the father of the Barnett shale. He drilled the first Barnett well in 1981, knowing there was something good there, but never dreaming it would turn out to be as significant as it now is.

It appears that when all the data are in, 2007 will be the first year in a long time that U.S. gas production rose, and most of that is due to the Barnett shale and the other shale plays that have followed in the past four years.

The energetic, focused Mitchell still loves to talk geology, and met with some Devon Energy folks recently because he has some more ideas about the Barnett.

The impact of these three energy entrepreneurs will be felt for years to come.

We are pleased to announce that we have acquired the COSCO Private Capital for Energy Forum from COSCO Capital Management LLC. Now renamed Oil and Gas Investor’s Energy Capital Forum, this popular event sets the standard for energy capital information and networking. It will still be held in Houston the first week in June, with COSCO as a partner. We’ve expanded the agenda to include public and private sources of capital, as well as debt and equity.

Be sure to register for our third annual DUG: Developing Unconventional Gas, coming April 1 in Fort Worth. New this year will be two half-day workshops on March 31, one on technology, and the other on A&D, in unconventional gas plays. That evening, at a gala dinner, we will honor George Mitchell, with Devon Energy CEO Larry Nichols presiding. It’s not to be missed.