Kendall Jones Neukomm (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome to Whitley Penn Talks, where we give you valuable insights to help you make confident informed decisions and move your business forward. My name is Kendall Jones Neukomm and today we are starting an exciting series called A Crude Bit of Humor. So we will get into what that means here in just a second but I’m excited to have two of my favorites, Coby Nathanson and Buffie Campbell. Thank you both for being here today.

Buffie Campbell (00:22)
Thank you! We’re so excited!

Coby Nathanson (00:34)
Thanks for having us.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (00:36)
Yeah, this has been a long time coming. faced technology struggles and scheduling conflicts and so today we’re making it happen. But ⁓ I’m super excited to get into what we’ll talk about and to start, let’s have both of you introduce yourselves because I know you very well, but our audience does not. So Buffie, will you kick us off with introductions?

Buffie Campbell (00:58)
Sure, so I’m Buffie Campbell. I have been at Whitley Penn here for about three years. I’m the managing director for the mineral management team. We actually represent mineral owners when it comes to leasing, it comes to making sure they get the right amount of revenue flow, their royalties are correct, their decimal interest are correct. We’re essentially the land man for the land owner over here at Whitley Penn.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (01:21)
Awesome. And Kobe, share a little bit about yourself as well.

Coby Nathanson (01:24)
Sure, ⁓ I’m Coby Nathanson. I’m the Senior Manager and Service Line Lead for Land Administration. What does that mean? ⁓ My team and I, we interface with the division order side when it comes to the oil and gas industry. That means we deal with owner relations, we deal with accounting, and we get a chance, that gives us an opportunity to help update the revenue decks and then also help maintain the gross working interest in the revenue schedules for our clients for any of that reporting that they might need to do.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (01:56)
Awesome. Thank you both.

Buffie Campbell (01:56)
We’re kind of the yin and the yang of this whole company side of things.

Coby Nathanson (01:59)
Yeah.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (02:00)
Yeah, I love it. I love it. And now for those listening, you understand a little bit more of the pun of the name. a crude bit of humor, we’ll be talking oil and gas on this series. We’ll be talking energy, land, mineral rights. So really excited to get into our first official crude bit of humor episode.

Well, cool. Let’s get into a bit more of our content today and some of our discussion questions that we have. So to kick us off, I wanted to ask the both of you if you had to describe the current energy M&A market using a movie title, what would it be currently?

Buffie Campbell (02:39)
You want this one? I don’t have an answer.

Coby Nathanson (02:42)
I think it feels a little bit like Jurassic Park Rebirth, the new one that’s out. I mean, first of all, we’ve got, what is it, the dinosaurs turning into soup that we bring out from the ground in any way, shape or form. And Buffy can probably speak to that a little bit better. But a little bit, it’s kind of same, same, but different that we see.

We’re seeing some ⁓ larger players merge in with some super majors. We’re seeing some of the big guys play. We’re also continuing to see private equity ⁓ invest in oil and gas. So we might see like smaller to midsize operators getting into that play. But generally speaking, it’s just, it’s a lot of movement to a certain extent. There’s a lot of uncertainty when that happens, but it is very exciting. think all of us, if we logged onto LinkedIn at any point in time, it’s hey, we’re excited to announce this acquisition or this divestiture that it’s just what day of the week is the new announcement going to come. again, kind of like we’re in the trend of sequels, but then there has to be something that’s a little bit different that makes it a little bit more exciting.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (03:54)
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for sharing.

Buffie Campbell (03:56)
I do actually agree with like the the back and forth and we’re all a little and unsure about what’s going on maybe a little dazed and confused kind of comes from me. Well we don’t quite know I don’t know if the movie has anything to do with what’s going on in the oil and gas market right now but definitely the name is fun so we’re all a little like we don’t know what’s going on we’ll see what happens.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (04:02)
Yes, with the name.

Yeah, well, we’ll pivot accordingly. Well, I think that ⁓ potentially oil and gas needs to consider a rebrand to dinosaurs to soup. I think that could be interesting.

Coby Nathanson (04:32)
This will absolutely ⁓ age and date me, but I remember the old NAPE conferences and Sinclair would be there and everybody wants the Sinclair dinosaur. I had my little green dinosaur for a long time, so it’s coming back. We can just rebrand it in the Whitley Penn oil barrel at the next conference. We’ll be good.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (04:43)
True, love it. Well, NAEP in February, maybe we can make that happen.

Coby Nathanson (04:57)
We’ll have Campbell soup cans available for everybody.

Buffie Campbell (05:01)
I’m all for that, let’s do it.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (05:04)
Coby, looking forward to NAPE 2026 and just M&A currently in the energy space. What is something that happened recently that kind of makes you say, that escalated quickly?

Coby Nathanson (05:15)
Well, Buffie and I, ⁓ we had the honor and privilege to attend the NADOA conference recently in Boston and to help with the acronym, it’s the National Association of Division Order Analysts, an incredibly sexy acronym. I don’t know how else they came up with it. But one of the really big topics that a fair number of the attendees came and talked to us about was AI and automation, because I think we’re seeing more C suites, not just in oil and gas in general, but across all industries that they’re investing in AI, they’re investing in automation.

And I think there is a disparity, especially as it applies to the oil and gas industry that you’ve got these larger operators, these super majors who have enough going on that AI and automation really does help them streamline their processes, right? And from what I’m hearing, the AI and automation, like it gets this like deep industry study and performance on it where it like, can really get into the nitty gritty and help streamline a lot of things.

So if you’re a large operator, a super major, and you’ve got a well with like 500 owners, the idea of automating putting folks into pay using AI to update owner information like that is that is an incredibly great tool for them right because it takes a lot of the administrative headache off of the analysts and helps put it in with a supercomputer for lack of a better word.

But I am seeing in some of the feedback I heard was, the smaller and mid-size operators are a little bit more concerned about it. There’s this concern about how am I going to be replaced with this? And will my career eventually be phased out for a ⁓ computer? And I think it’s incredibly, it’s fascinating. It really is.

But I completely understand both sides, that it’s like we can accelerate our work and we can focus on doing like real true analyst work versus is this going to take away like 50 or 60 percent of my of my work. I think also specifically from like owners that I’ve talked to in our owner relations services they’re concerned about talking to a robot. Generally speaking the folks that I’m talking to, they’re a little bit older. They don’t necessarily want to talk to a robot. They want to talk to a real life person. And there’s some concern and hesitancy with that. I think, yes, been mounting. I think if we look at the new cycles that we’ve been going through, AI automation, we’re all investing in it. We’re all trying to figure out what the next big thing is. It’s it’s becoming a reality instead of theoretical right now.

Buffie Campbell (08:14)
So maybe our movie is the Terminator, right? I mean, that’s always been like that epitome of what we all think of like previously, we all kind of think that’s going to happen, right? I don’t think that’s we’re going to get to that level. I sure hope not. However, I mean, it does seem like it’s happening really fast and we all have copilot in some essence on our computers at this point and Google does an AI search with everything that we do.

One of the questions that also came up at NADOA with AI was who does that entry level stuff now? If AI does it, then we don’t have people learning it. So how do we have people in those like middle positions, middle management positions and stuff? They’re not going to have a basis or an understanding of what’s going on. So how do we train that? That’s kind of something that needs to be looked at. so moving the AI along really fast, especially with these larger companies coming into play and utilizing that kind of stuff is, I think that’s where we’re seeing a lot of escalation right there.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (09:12)
Right? Like you’re solving for a problem for now, but what impact is that going to make? And what holes are you creating for five or 10 years down the line? Yeah.

Buffie Campbell (09:15)
Exactly. Yeah, especially for personnel. I mean, I just think that’s going to be a big, a big issue. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Coby Nathanson (09:26)
Well, I wonder if part of it is going to be that it’ll end up shifting probably in a good way because I cite my personal experience in the industry. I started at a small operator. We had two analysts on staff and with teaming up with her, she and I, handled everything. And so I wonder if it’s going to not necessarily become a have or have not sort of thing, but it’ll then it’ll provide the opportunity for newer analysts or newer folks into the industry to really get into a smaller operator and actually get a wide breadth of experience instead of just focusing in solely because I would credit my experience that being in a small operator, I got to learn a little bit of everything and get exposed to a little bit of everything that’s helped create a wide breadth of experience and knowledge that’s like, I know that X ties into Y ties into Z as opposed to being siloed in all I do is division order calculations. ⁓ So that is my hope is that it’ll help shift and allow newer folks to get in at smaller places and kind of expand their breadth of knowledge and experience.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (10:41)
Kind of on that note and diving in a little bit deeper to each of your roles, ⁓ Buffie, what would you say is the biggest misconception right now about mineral rights?

Buffie Campbell (10:53)
Man, so I think there’s a lot of people out there that just think it’s not walks money and you don’t really have to do anything. It’s just a check coming in the mail every month, right? And that’s fine if you’re really not concerned if you might get one check a month and you’re really not concerned about the wells or that you’re being paid correctly.

That’s perfectly fine. But if you are concerned, if you’ve got a large amount of minerals, if you receive multiple checks in the mail, there’s a lot of contractual work that goes along with that. So on top of the lease that you need to make sure you understand and a lot of people don’t, on top of the lease there’s division orders that come in the door. There are and you want to like really verify those decimal interests with what’s on your check detail because I mean we’ve had plenty of time for weeks and execute a division order send it off agree to terms.

And then it’s a completely different number that we’re being paid off of. And so that’s something you just gotta stay on top of and track it, whether it’s with software, it’s Excel, it kinda depends on what you need. it really is a lot more than just mailbox money at this point. There’s a lot of moving factors in there.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (11:48)
Yep.

Yeah, definitely. Buffie, next question is, is going to be your direction. Has there been anything recently that you’ve looked at in the M&A space or a deal that you thought looked really great on paper but kind of became a soap opera or turned into something that had a lot of implications in real life? Anything like that recently that you’ve seen?

Buffie Campbell (12:11)
Um, that’s a really, really good question. So I started in this business a really long time ago, feel like. I’ll tell you, it flies really fast. And I think it was more of a soap opera back then, because I really started in the early 2000s, kind of mid-2000s. Barnett Shell was a big, huge deal. And we had brokers buying for operators competing against each other. So we had this like crazy market going on that caused a lot of competition that was really unneeded and took lease bonuses way up until like $25,000, $30,000 an acre, which was just crazy. So that is, that’s where I saw a lot of soap opera drama, but I haven’t seen anything like that. And I really don’t think that we’re going to have anything like that coming out into the future.

I think a lot of these companies that are coming in making these large purchases, mergers with the super majors, stuff like that. It’s taking away a lot of that competitiveness in that situation on the leasing side of things. Not that it’s not still there. There’s always new plates being found. Definitely some stuff out in West Texas right now where we’re seeing deeper acreage being drilled and some leasing for that.

I’m not really seeing a lot of soap opera stuff, which is great. This is what this industry needs. We don’t want soap operas in the oil and gas industry. We are not actually land man as much as Taylor Sheridan likes to throw it out there. are dealing with, I’ve never once had a paper bag over my head or a cartel come out for me for anything. Not to say that it’s never happened, but…

Kendall Jones Neukomm (13:53)
You’ve never had your private jet stolen?

Buffie Campbell (13:56)
No, no, no, unfortunately not. It is nice and secure.

Coby Nathanson (14:00)
So I actually have a follow-up question with that, because I got into the industry around the same time, worked Barnett around the same time, and it was funny to me that depending on the subdivision you were in, you’d either have 1,000 owners because they all had like a quarter of an acre versus you go over to another one and the real estate developer was smart and retained the minerals.

With that, I guess how much are you seeing more of like a mineral consolidation like some of these bigger mineral acquisition groups like just trying to collect and consolidate as much as they possibly can and and help kind of almost eliminate the drop the drama.

Buffie Campbell (14:41)
Yeah, and it seems like mineral buyers, I call them aggregate mineral buyers because they’re looking for like just giant swaths of land, right? Or completely acquiring another mineral company and all of their assets. So we just saw Viper acquiring Cydia royalties and so that’s kind of what you’re talking about, right? Pretty big deal right there, and then we’re seeing less ground game when it comes to mineral buying on our end. We’re seeing a lot of just like large purchases come through which is interesting but it does seem like it’s just like a change of hands right? It’s just like one company A to company B ⁓ same thing and then they roll it back over to company C. 

Kendall Jones Neukomm (15:17)
Yeah.

Buffie, you say ground game, what does that mean for listeners who may not be familiar with the space?

Buffie Campbell (15:28)
Mm-hmm.

That is where you’re actually approaching individual mineral owners, sending out letters, running tax records, finding out ownership information about a specific mineral owner and then approaching them to purchase their property individually. You’re not actually going and buying another company’s asset listing. A little scrappier. 

Kendall Jones Neukomm (15:51)
Gotcha. So a little, little scrappier on the ground game for sure. Yeah.

Buffie Campbell (15:57)
And there’s a lot of equity, like private equity in this market at this point. So I think we’re seeing a lot more money changing hands when it’s big company going to another big company like that on these mineral acquisitions.

Coby Nathanson (16:07)
Are you noticing some of that a little bit more sophistication coming through? How do I want to say that?

Buffie Campbell (16:15)
Do I want to answer this question?

Coby Nathanson (16:18)
Yes, you do.

No, because it’s like, I would think, I think of like the small owners that I interact with actually had phone calls with recently that it’s, they get maybe $150 a month, they’re happy for it, but they don’t, they just naturally don’t understand because they don’t have the education level. But then with these conglomerate’s the wrong word, but with these aggregating companies and these larger mineral buyers, are we seeing them be more sophisticated? Does that impact the term negotiations? Like coming back to the AI and automation, are they funneling that data into like dashboards that make things like bright and shiny?

Buffie Campbell (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think a lot of them are pulling in dashboards and a lot of them are getting software savvy as well as opposed to relying on Excel. I mean, this industry relied on Excel for forever, right? But it does seem like actually buying into that software aspect so that you’re mapping properties so that they are retaining revenue detail as well.

So it makes that due diligence side of things so much easier when you’re trying to divest those assets or if you’re the company that’s trying to acquire them, it makes everything so much easier. So in that capacity, yes, I think they’re a lot savvier and a lot more information is being transferred from company A to company B in that type of situation. There are a lot of smaller companies still out there that are trying to make these purchases that, I mean, that due diligence is still lot of documents, right? And that’s kind of what we’re looking at.

But, overall, would say, you’ve got to have lot more due diligence when you’re buying a billion dollars worth of minerals right there. And that’s, you gotta have a lot more information.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (18:01)
Yeah.

Definitely. then to round out this episode, Buffie, one more kind of question for you to lead us down a new path here a little bit. So have you ever seen a deal that started opportunistic but turned into a strategic gold mine? And what can you share there?

Buffie Campbell (18:19)
Yeah, so a couple years ago I was at a narrow conference, National Association of Royalty Owners Conference at Whitley Penn. We’re big fans of theirs. We join in on their conferences a lot, so plug to them. But also I met a woman there that had purchased her mineral interests in West Texas off of eBay. So like early 2000s, purchased like randomly when they sold real estate on eBay and she bought, I mean, it wasn’t even like a huge area, but the fact that it was in West Texas and they started drilling right underneath there, you know, within 10 years of her purchasing it. And she just got rocketed with revenue at that point. in that crazy, we hear really weird, crazy stories like that on the mineral side a lot.

The vast majority of them are inherited because dad did something in exchange like an attorney that did ⁓ legal work in exchange for mineral interest or dentists that did dental work instead of in exchange for mineral interest. So we hear stuff like that all the time, but purchasing mineral interest on eBay was a first. That was very interesting. ⁓

Coby Nathanson (19:31)
I did not play eBay smart at all. I was like, where can I get a discount on something from Forever 21? Which is not how I needed to spend my money.

Buffie Campbell (19:38)
Right? Right?

Kendall Jones Neukomm (19:40)
I know, that’s so crazy. Yeah I’m a big fan of eBay now but I definitely wasn’t on eBay 20 years ago unfortunately so…

Coby Nathanson (19:54)
It’s like, let me do this root canal and I’m gonna get 500 acres in West Texas. And so you’ve got some ceramic in your head while I’ve got royalties pouring in over here.

Buffie Campbell (20:14)
Yeah, and that location, mean, 20 years ago, nobody knew what West Texas was. I mean, we knew it was producing acreage, but it was kind of like dead in the water, right? Nobody was going out there and doing new things. And so, yeah, within like 10 years, that lady had plenty of money and needed management. So yeah, very cool. Very cool situation there.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (20:34)
Yeah, I know good for her. I hope that, you know, she’s on a beach somewhere or spends more time on a beach or on a mountain or anywhere in between. So very cool story. Yeah, definitely. So we need to be on eBay more often. That’s what I’m hearing. ⁓

Buffie Campbell (20:40)
Right, it’s fantastic.

Coby Nathanson (20:50)
If IT will allow me to add that extension on my browser so I can get an alert, hey mineral rights?

Kendall Jones Neukomm (20:59)
Yeah, we’ll be like Coby’s on a lot of sneaker auctions on eBay. Should we allow this or not?

All right, well, with that, I’m gonna wrap this up today, but looking forward to more and more episodes of a crude bit of humor. So thank you, Kobe, thank you, Buffy. This has been extremely helpful. If listeners have questions, are they able to email you? Do you want them to find you on LinkedIn? What’s the best way? Both?

Buffie Campbell (21:39)
Both! We’re here!

Coby Nathanson (21:40)
ALl of the above. As long as you haven’t gotten my phone number off a bathroom wall, we’re good.

Kendall Jones Neukomm (21:47)
 So they’re available to answer any of your questions or just chat about the industry. I think both of you are very knowledgeable and great to spend some time with. So I appreciate you both. For those listening, if you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or listen right here on our website at WhitleyPin.com slash podcast. If you’re interested in receiving future episodes of this series, straight to your inbox.

Check the link in the description to sign up for our email list. Again, thank you, Buffie. Thank you, Coby. Here’s to a crude bit of humor and all that will come.