HOUSTON—The opportunity to attract capital is now, despite lower for longer oil prices, according to energy consultant Arthur Gelber. A series of geopolitical uncertainties leads his firm to think that crude prices will suffer in the intermediate term, even if natural gas prices increase broadly. And there are still ways to attract capital, despite the current overproduction, he said.

Despite geopolitical uncertainty in emerging markets, Russia and the Middle East, opportunities to attract and deploy capital exist, Gelber, the president of Gelber & Associates Corp. and Gelber Energy LLC, told an audience at the Summer North American Prospect Expo this week.

“Capital, we think, is going to be more expensive and opportunistic,” he said. “Nearly $100 billion has been raised in distressed asset funds by private equity, and that’s in 2015 alone.”

If the money cannot find distressed assets, however, it might be diverted to other projects, Gelber said, including the clean power initiative “that the government’s trying to prove.”

There’s opportunity out there, though. “Tremendous amounts of capital are available to you, to this industry today. It’s a great opportunity for the buyers.”

Capital flows will see four large categories of opportunity, Gelber said. The first is the midstream. “We think capital’s really interested in midstream assets and infrastructure,” he said. “What that means is pipelines, processing, facilities, terminals, connecting the new basins to the new markets. That’s a lot of steel. That’s a lot of operations to get the Marcellus connected to New York and New England to bring the excess gas down to the Gulf Coast for exports. It’s a tremendous amount of investment.”

Optimizing the portfolio will help attract capital as well. “During the period of upward markets, there was an expansion. We think companies have assets that were sort of at the fringe of their core operations, and the move back to the core, to de-risk your assets, is one way to attract capital that you’re looking for to keep your businesses growing.”

Joint ventures with utilities and consumers present an interesting opportunity. “Those end-users are very eager to put their capital to work. They’re very eager, particularly the utilities, to seize the abundant and inexpensive natural gas that we seek today.” He added, “The chasm of attitudes on what the oil and gas industry does on the upside and what the utilities do on the downside can be great and can be bridged.”

Lastly, Gelber suggested promoting dry gas production. “We think gas is really going to be where the action is for the next couple of years, so look at your dry gas properties. Natural gas pricing, we think, is trending higher. We think it’s going to be a great place to be.”

Natural gas’ drivers lie on the demand side. Gelber sees an increase between 9 Bcf/d and 32 Bcf/d over the next five years, coming from four primary categories. The first is LNG demand, which he sees increasing 4 Bcf/d to 12 Bcf/d. Industrial demand will claim between 3 Bcf/d and 7 Bcf/d, and exports to Mexico will add another 2 Bcf/d to 8 Bcf/d. And the Clean Power Plan, assuming it will be implemented, will increase demand by up to 5 Bcf/d.

Now contrast those clear, positive drivers with the opaque political oil market.

“The oil markets are interesting because they are highly manipulated,” Gelber said. “They’re a lot more political than natural gas markets.”

Gelber pointed to China’s slowing growth, domestic efficiency gains and a weak Euro zone as flags for a wilting worldwide demand. On the supply side, Saudi Arabia continues to have an aversion to acting as the swing producer, and the members of OPEC are driven by individual needs.

“We see each independent participant operating based on their own rational needs,” Gelber said, “but the rational needs of each participant does not necessarily meet the rational needs of the market in general, so the OPEC members like Venezuela are producing as much as they can in order to maintain their social programs and government budgets.”

Gelber also applauded the U.S. producers in the crowd for their ability to raise production despite a sheer drop-off in the rig count.

Producers must find a way to get out of a spiraling feedback loop where decreasing prices lead to more necessary production, which in turn lead to more price cuts and more subsequent production. Debt restructuring, asset sales, overhead reductions and reduced capital spending are the cures for that treadmill, Gelber said. Do those things, and producers might attract waiting capital.

“The market we see today is a great opportunity,” he said. “The opportunity is right now.”