Leslie Haines

Every so often, a new idea bursts onto the scene that ends up changing everything. At the time, you usually don’t know how big and far-reaching it can be. You don’t understand what the ramifications will be. The silicon chip is one example. The iPad, a more recent one. Multistage fracturing and 3-D seismic are others.

Twenty years ago, the NAPE Expo began. Cell phones were just starting to be widespread. Today, NAPE has grown substantially and the industry it serves has changed so radically, thanks to horizontal drilling and fracturing, that we’re in a whole new ball game. Oil imports are being backed out to a greater degree each day. Since 2008, U.S. oil production has risen 25%—the highest amount of oil output growth seen in any single country in that time frame.

The first year, 1993, NAPE was known as the North American Prospect Expo. A radical idea, the brainchild of the American Association of Professional Landmen, it was primarily meant to jumpstart an industry that was languishing. Geologists were complaining that there were not enough good prospects left anymore. Drilling activity was lukewarm. Morale was down.

The first year there were 80 exhibitors and about 800 attendees. Now, the event draws close to 20,000 people and it has expanded from Winter NAPE to include Summer NAPE every August, and new this year, NAPE East in Pittsburgh will debut in April.

Those first exhibitors in 1993 were a hardy group of E&P companies, each willing to display prospect brochures and maps set out on a table in front of simple drapery. Many of that first year’s attendees were skeptical of the unique concept and came merely out of curiosity—or to see if it would fail, truth be told.

What geologist or landman in his right mind would openly display a company’s best drilling prospects in such an unprofessional, nonconfidential atmosphere? It was unseemly. Unthinkable. If the deal was so good, why hadn’t it already been sold to some industry partner weeks ago? Were these prospects on display at NAPE just the dregs, just the second-rate ideas?

But no. After that first NAPE, positive word of mouth spread like wildfire. Deals were getting done. Meetings were arranged. One attendee told me, surveying how busy the show floor was that first year, “I never realized how big the oil and gas industry is, until I saw everyone here in one place. It makes you realize how busy we all are and how much is really going on all the time, when you see everyone here, instead of having to go from your office to the next one down the hall—or across town.”

Indeed, NAPE took off and grew like crazy. In 1995, organizers added the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) as a partner and by 2004, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) also joined as partners.

In a few short years, they were forced to expand NAPE from one Houston hotel to a second, adjacent hotel, and finally, since it was still overflowing with participants, they moved it to the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston where it is held today. One can visit huge and elaborate two-story booths from the likes of ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, or Chesapeake Energy Corp., as well as small exhibits from one- or two-man prospect-generating shops.

But booth size doesn’t matter, as long as the prospects being shown are solid ideas that fit someone’s strategy and pocketbook. The ball game has changed for the better thanks to new and renewed relationships made at NAPE Expo, ideas exchanged there—and the march of new technologies and best practices now being shared by everyone in the oil patch.

We are pleased to welcome senior editor Steve Toon back from his recent fact-finding trip to Australia’s oil patch, and to let you know he will now be writing the At Closing column at the back of the magazine. You’ll read more about his travels there.

Remember, we are now accepting your nominations for the Oil and Gas Investor Excellence Awards, now in their 10th year! Who do you think should be Executive of the Year for 2012? Which deal should be named M&A Deal of the Year? Go to OilandGasInvestor.com ? and click on the Awards logo to send us your nominations in these and several other categories, or send me your thoughts directly at lhaines@harten? ergy.com? . But hurry, nominations close on March 15, and we need your input. You can nominate someone at your own company, a colleague, a competitor—anyone in the upstream business that made an impact on the industry in 2012.

Finally, we hope to see you in Fort Worth on April 3 and 4 for DUG Permian Basin and More.