People did not always like what Matt Simmons had to say. But they always listened.
Simmons, who died Aug. 8, 2010, at 67, was an industry pundit nonpareil. He founded Simmons & Co. International and was its chairman until retiring a few months ago. He also wrote “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.” The book warned of a looming oil shortage and became a Wall Street Journal best-seller.
The book was inspired by a 2003 trip to Saudi Arabia. Businessweek reported that Simmons returned from the trip and began studying reams of technical papers trying to determine remaining reserves. “The book catapulted Simmons into the limelight,” the article states.
T. Boone Pickens, chairman of BP Capital LLC, emailed a statement to Bloomberg saying, “In the history of the petroleum era, Matt Simmons will be remembered for calling attention to ‘peak oil.’ You have to admire his advocacy and his ability to focus on the need to better prepare for a new energy future.”
Added Dan Pickering, who worked at Simmons & Co. before becoming co-president of the Tudor-Pickering Holt & Co. investment bank in Houston, “He was somebody who was very comfortable challenging conventional wisdom, someone who thought beyond the near term and was a very good analyst in terms of identifying big trends.” Pickering also spoke to Bloomberg.
After the Macondo incident, Simmons made controversial statements about how to plug the well, telling Bloomberg Television in June that the best option would be to detonate a small nuclear bomb. A Businessweek article said it was “vintage Simmons,” quoting Bobby Tudor, co-founder of Tudor-Pickering as saying, “Matt was very iconoclastic, very outspoken, and never afraid to take a position.”
After graduating cum laude from the University of Utah and receiving an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, Simmons founded a small investment bank/advisory firm in Boston. Some of his early clients were subsea service companies. By 1973, almost all of his clients were oil service companies. During the Arab oil embargo, he launched Simmons & Co. International, a specialized energy investment banking firm, in Houston. The goal was to provide the highest quality investment banking advice to the industry. Over time, the business expanded to investment banking, covering all aspects of the energy industry, including research, trading, and merger and acquisition work for both service and E&P companies.
The firm has completed about 770 investment banking projects for its energy clients at a combined value of US $140 billion. The company also has offices in Boston, London, Aberdeen, and Dubai.
Simmons established the Ocean Energy Institute (OEI) in Rockland, Maine, in 2007. The purpose of the institute is to attract R&D investment into renewable energy from the ocean. The organization is working with the state of Maine on offshore wind turbines.
In a statement on the OEI website, Wickham Skinner, director of the institute, posted: “The sudden passing of Matt Simmons, the founder of the Ocean Energy Institute, is not only sad to all those involved, but constitutes a major loss to the institute’s endeavor. His leadership was strong; his energy extraordinary.
“The ideas Matt set forth and was placing into motion are so powerful and vital to Maine and, indeed, to the concepts of worldwide alternative energy, that they will now be pursued with fervor, vigor, and determination by his many admirers and his successors at OEI.”
Simmons remained active in a number of organizations. He served on the board of directors of the Houston Technology Center and the Center for Houston’s Future. He was on the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Foundation Board of Visitors and was a trustee of the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences. He also was past chairman of the National Ocean Industry Association and a past president of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association.
Additionally, he was a member of the National Petroleum Council, Council on Foreign Relations, and The Atlantic Council of the United States.
Simmons leaves behind a wife and five daughters.
A memorial service is planned for Simmons in Houston at noon on Oct. 4, 2010, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Caroline Wiess Law Building, Cullinan Hall, 1001 Bissonet St. In lieu of flowers, the Simmons family requests that donations be made to the Ocean Energy Research Institute at http://www.oceanenergy.org.
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