Good morning; here's what the Oilman has for you today:

• TotalEnergies Begins Drilling in Uganda

• The Oilman’s Billionaire of the Week: Jeffery Hildebrand, Part 1

• Upcoming Oil and Gas Events

• Tweet of the Day

TotalEnergies Begins Drilling in Uganda

It’s a sad week for climate activists everywhere and especially in Africa.

It’s the week when TotalEnergies was reported to have started drilling at the Tilenga field in Uganda.

One more newcomer on the world oil scene

Oil was discovered in Uganda just a few years ago.

TotalEnergies and China’s CNOOC each took a field and struck a deal with the government to develop them.

Reserves at Tilenga and Kingfisher are estimated at about 1 billion barrels.

It sure sounds like a development that makes sense.

Even when you’re trying hard to pass as a green energy company, which is what TotalEnergy is doing.

In the end, though, even TotalEnergies has had to admit the oil and gas rule and will continue to rule for the observable.

And Uganda has every right to make the most of its resources, just as every other resource-rich country.

The pipeline of contention

The situation is already a nightmare for activists, but to add insult to injury, Uganda and its partners are also planning a pipeline.

The longest heated pipeline in the world, to be precise.

Uganda is landlocked. To get its oil to world markets, it needs a port.

Neighbor Tanzania has been only too happy to offer one of its own.

And now the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline is underway.

Despite calls from activists for banks to pull funding from the project.

Despite protests and angry letters.

Because Uganda has oil and wants to sell it.

And there’s a world out there that wants to buy it.

Sometimes life is really very simple.

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The Oilman’s Billionaire of the Week:

Jeffery Hildebrand, Part 1: A humble beginning and efficiency

The man who looked for missed opportunities

Far from the limelight, a man worth more than $10 billion dollars has built the largest privately held U.S. oil and gas company.

The man’s name is Jeffery Hildebrand.

A Texan native, geologist, and petroleum engineer, Hildebrand is in some way no less of a game-changer than Harold Hamm.

Because what he does is take other companies’ underperforming assets and make them shine.

A flop at the start doesn’t mean you give up

Hildebrand’s start in the oil business wasn’t as poetic as Hamm’s.

It was quite standard, with him doing a stint with Exxon. Later he tried his hand at wildcatting on his own, and that didn’t quite work as expected.

But then Hildebrand decided to try something different.

He decided to bet on already discovered fields.

And not just any fields – he wanted the mature, second-rate fields that companies would be happy to get rid of.

This is where his degrees in geology and petroleum engineering came in handy.

Because Hildebrand essentially bet that he can make those underperforming, second-rate wells yield more oil.

And guess what – he was right.

Hilcorp Energy Company

Hilcorp Energy Company was set up in 1989 with the financial help of a Texas investor, the now-late Jack Trotter.

Its focus: get old assets off the hands of their owners so they can chase their new projects freely…

…And then make those assets work.

The strategy worked so well that it made Hildebrand a billionaire.

But the funniest part? The push for a transition away from oil and gas helped.

It helped a lot…

But we’ll talk about that next week.

Upcoming Oil & Gas Events

• July 28: SOOGA Annual Industry Boat Ride, Valley Gem, Marietta, OH

• July 31-Aug 2: 2023 Railroad Commission of Texas

• August 3-4: OOGA Summer Meeting, Belmont Hills Country Club, St Clairsville, OH

Around the Global Patch

🇯🇵 Japan contemplates subsidy grants to revitalize nuclear power.
🇨🇳 China's crude stockpiling hits a three-year high.
🇪🇸 Enagas profit soars four-fold after Mexico's sales in H1 2023.

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