• CERAWEEK 2025 | March 10-14, 2025
  • CERAWEEK
  • March 10 - 14, 2025

Gerald Kepes

IHS Markit

Executive Director, Plays and Basins, Upstream Oil & Gas Insight

Gerald Kepes is Executive Director, Plays and Basins, Upstream Oil & Gas Insight, IHS Markit. Prior to the acquisition of PFC Energy in June 2013 by IHS, Mr. Kepes was Partner and Head of its Upstream Practice. He has worked on engagements with IOCs and NOCs in the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and Asia. Projects include regional and global E&P strategies, E&P competitive analysis, growth plays, assessing aboveground risk in the global hydrocarbon sector, and industry- and country-specific E&P business environment scenarios. Previously, Mr. Kepes was an exploration geologist for Marathon Oil Company. Regional experience focused on North Africa and the Middle East. He holds a BS from the University of Dayton, Ohio; an MS from the University of New Mexico; and an MA from the at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Sessions With Gerald Kepes

Tuesday, 10 March

  • 11:30am - 12:30pm (CST) / -

    Role of "E" in "E&P": The future of exploration
    Upstream Oil & Gas

    Globally, conventional exploration and discoveries are at the lowest level in seven decades—not from lack of resource potential, but from lack of investment by a financial market disenchanted by lower returns from North American unconventional production onshore. Larger operators are determining strategies that emphasize financial returns, but with lower growth; however, financial market distrust is driving investors out of the upstream sector altogether. Conventional NFW drilling has shifted towards maturing phase basins, close to infrastructure, and with faster cycle times. Could disenchantment with onshore NA production drive operators back to conventional exploration in the medium term? Will a push to generate value versus volume growth hurt conventional exploration or reward those companies that show that a relentless focus on exploration generates value? Will the role of future exploration programs be to find new, highly competitive basins or to improve the value of larger, maturing basins? In lower oil and natural gas demand scenarios, will investors still be interested in even highly successful exploration?

  • 03:00pm - 03:45pm (CST) / -

    Plenary - Competitive Sources of Supply
    Upstream Oil & Gas

    The future for global crude oil supply faces the most challenges and uncertainty since the mid-1980s. Competitive oil and gas supplies are influenced by volume, quality, and cost of supply of remaining resources; investment behavior; and concerns about demand destruction or “peak oil” in a policy environment focused on promoting renewable technologies. In a lower oil or gas demand scenario, not all “barrels” will attract investment or find a market. The most competitive “barrels” will be those that offer the lowest cost, lowest emission, shortest cycle time, and most capital commitment flexibility. What other factors will influence supply competitiveness? Are there enough competitive E&P industry investment opportunities? Will the focus on project design, applications of digital and other technologies, efficiencies in the supply chain, and concentrated portfolios create more competitive supply?