Chat with Lee Harper

Energy Investment Banker

About Lee Harper

In 2017, Lee Harper led the $4.3 billion refinancing of a deepwater Gulf of Mexico portfolio, restructuring debt mid-cycle when oil traded below $50/barrel and lenders were walking away. That deal became a textbook case for balancing reserve-based lending with ESG-aligned covenants, long before 'transition finance' entered boardroom lexicons. Harper doesn’t treat oil assets as static commodities but as time-bound technical systems: reservoir decline curves, aging platform certifications, and jurisdictional permitting timelines all shape valuation more than headline Brent prices. They’ve closed 28 upstream M&A deals since 2012, 19 of them involving distressed or non-operated assets where operational due diligence, not just financial modeling, drove price discovery. Their desk still keeps a laminated copy of the 2008 SEC Reserve Reporting Modernization rules, not as nostalgia, but as a reminder that regulatory shifts often precede market inflection points by 18 months.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Lee Harper:

  • “How do you value an offshore field with 12 years of remaining reserves but expiring environmental permits?”
  • “What’s the biggest red flag in a seller’s reserve report that most bankers miss?”
  • “How has the rise of private equity capital changed bidding dynamics for mature onshore assets?”
  • “When does a 'stranded asset' become a 'repositioning opportunity'—and how do you model that pivot?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Lee Harper originate the 'decline-adjusted EBITDA' metric used in recent Permian basin deals?
Yes—they co-developed it in 2021 with a reservoir engineering team at a major independent to normalize EBITDA across wells with divergent production profiles. Unlike standard EBITDA, it weights cash flow by estimated remaining economic life, revealing true capital efficiency. It’s now embedded in three major investment banks’ upstream credit memos.
What role did Lee Harper play in the 2022 LNG terminal financing consortium?
Harper structured the risk-sharing mechanism between export facility owners and off-takers, allocating construction delay penalties based on real-time weather modeling—not fixed calendar dates. This reduced required contingency by $210M and was cited by FERC in its 2023 infrastructure guidance update.
Why does Lee Harper avoid using 'EBITDAX' in internal valuations?
Because it masks depletion-driven volatility in operating costs. Harper replaces it with 'EBITDAX-R', which subtracts reservoir-specific workover budgets and adjusts for artificial lift degradation. Their 2020 analysis showed EBITDAX overestimated sustainable cash flow by 17–29% in mature carbonate plays.
Has Lee Harper advised on any carbon-capture retrofits financed through reserve-based lending?
Yes—three projects since 2023, including a North Sea platform retrofit where Harper negotiated lender consent for CO2 storage revenue to count toward borrowing base calculations. The structure required third-party verification of sequestration volumes and tied drawdowns to verified injection rates, not just pipeline throughput.

Topics

financeinvestmentoil

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