Today it was our pleasure to host James West, Senior Managing Director and Partner at Evercore ISI. James heads Evercore's oil service, equipment and drilling research team as well as the sustainable technologies and clean energy team and has an extensive research career covering the OFS sector. As you will hear, we had a hard time wrapping up the discussion as the scope of what James sees, analyzes and discusses daily covers a broad range within energy, across the globe, and across a broad swath of investor types. It was a fantastic discussion. 

In our conversation today, we touch on James's observations gained from covering traditional/classic energy as well as the clean energy space, his takeaways from recent investor meetings in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Italy, his latest insights on the European energy and security crisis and how it may play out, the return of investors to oil and gas, climate investors and their mandates, the revenge of the S in ESG, the meaning of just transition, offshore's role in supply and demand in the coming years, the Evercore energy research group's culture, scope, and overall organization, helpful and harmful energy policies, the appropriate size for the US SPR, and much more. We wrap with James's thoughts on the energy world ten years from now. We had great fun talking with James and hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. 

For the Veriten team's upfront discussion, Mike Bradley highlighted bond, commodity and equity performance, noting rising natural gas production and potential outcomes from the upcoming OPEC meeting. Colin Fenton continued the commodity theme with a look at the market's reactions to a potential cut in production and also shared optimistic observations from recent meetings in Midland. 

In today's discussion and here in this lead-in, we also want to acknowledge the recent passing of legendary energy industry veteran Steve Chazen and offer our deepest condolences to his family. Steve touched so many of our lives and he and his tremendous contributions will not be forgotten.