Rick Burdick Discusses Global Energy Issues and Trends with MCC

In “The Global Reach Of The Energy Industry,” The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel interviewed Akin Gump global energy and transactions chair Rick Burdick on his career, the firm’s global energy deals and current and upcoming trends in energy exploration and production.

Among the topics Burdick discussed:

• Global shale gas development: “Each play is different…In each play, engineers have to learn what works in that play as to how they do the fracking, how they do the drilling and how they do the completion. It is an experimental process before you get to the point where it becomes more or less perfected for a play.”
• Extraction technologies: “Unconventional development know-how, horizontal drilling and fracking have to be at the top of the list, as well as the engineering associated with deep water exploration and production.”
• Oil and gas in emerging economies: “If I were a government designing a model, I would try to use the development of my own natural resources as a way to build my own oil company. I would use a partnership with an international company to build the development and financial skills needed to become a global oil company. This approach provides sustained economic development for the host country.”
• U.S. energy independence: “In terms of gas, we already are independent and have been for some time because we have never imported significant amounts of LNG into the U.S. In terms of oil, we can become independent in that the production here in the U.S. is more than we need to satisfy our own needs. But...we are never going to be independent of the global market for oil because oil is a global commodity.”

To read the full interview, please click here.