By DAVID BROWN
EXPLORER Correspondent

Here's the Deal in New Orleans

Buyers Will Meet Sellers at Expanded Prospect Marketplace

Let's Make A Deal

Want your deal to be part of this year's Prospect and Property Marketplace?

There's still time -- but the best booths are going fast.

This year's marketplace -- featuring an expanded location on the main exhibits floor at the AAPG annual meeting in New Orleans -- is designed to provide a cost-effective, efficient way of conducting business.

It's where the buyers and sellers will have a chance to do business, because being offered will be acreage positions, drilling projects, royalty interests, working interest or producing and exploration properties -- all in one location.

Booth costs range from $550 for one day of exhibit space, to $1,500 for the full convention. The on-site "walk-on" price is $1,900.

To reserve your space, or for more information, you can:

 Download a copy of the PPM contract (as well as all information on the PPM).

 Contact marketplace chairman Jim Zotkiewicz, telephone (504) 849-4129; e-mail -- jimz@llog.com.

 Contact Dana Patterson Free with the AAPG convention department in Tulsa, telephone (918) 560-2696; e-mail -- dfree@aapg.org.

As point man for a major AAPG initiative, Jim Zotkiewicz hears from everywhere.

"My name is spread around out there," he said, "so I get e-mails from all over -- Australia, the Netherlands, Trinidad, England, a lot of interest domestically."

Why the interest?

Zotkiewicz fields those messages as chairman of the Prospect and Property Marketplace (PPM), an expanded feature of AAPG's 2000 annual meeting in New Orleans.

His committee has big plans for the PPM, a centralized area of the exhibits hall dedicated for presenting prospects, offering properties and cutting deals.

Prospect marketplaces have been offered at previous AAPG meetings, but this year's convention committee has decided to aggressively promote the concept as an integral part of the meeting's activities.

In fact, the New Orleans' committee members hope to attract up to five times as many presenters as last year.

And if it isn't the biggest thing to blow through New Orleans since the backwinds of Hurricane Georges, it won't be for lack of effort.

"Right now we're trying to turn it into a headline event," Zotkiewicz said. "I think the industry is going this way (in offering exploration prospects) because everybody comes to you. Instead of going to 50 cities or 50 companies, it's in one place.

"So, the cost-savings are significant."

The Numbers Game

One reason for the PPM push is obvious. With oil and gas prices up smartly, companies can take Long Green to the Big Easy. Managers once again have money for plays, most of it aimed at building focused, high-quality portfolios.

Other motives may be less clear, however. And looking ahead, there's a chance that prospect presentations may move away from the exhibit halls and onto the Internet.

New Orleans' general chairman Erik Mason sees the PPM as a registration magnet.

"We decided to try and do the best we could to make the AAPG convention a must-attend for geologists and geophysicists," Mason said. "And the way we could do that is to make the convention a place to do business."

Mason, an exploration geologist for Shell in New Orleans, called the property marketplace "absolutely a tremendous way to market prospects." The convention draws exploration geologists and managers from around the world, he noted.

The Louisiana location adds an offshore flavor.

"We felt like our niche was the offshore and international, but we aren't excluding anybody," he said. "In fact, we expect many companies with onshore prospects to be exhibiting."

"If there is a European company that wants to view Gulf of Mexico prospects, this will be a great place for that."

The Gulf angle appeals to Don Burks, president of Burks Oil & Gas Properties, in Houston. Burks, who will be a PPM exhibitor, said his 11-year-old company has sold three-quarters of a billion dollars of producing properties.

"This type of a setting allows us to show what we do, to people who pass by," Burks said. "We'll have a large map of the Gulf Coast area showing where we have properties and where we've sold properties in the past."

Burks views the PPM as "a way to enhance our database of contacts" in addition to making deals. Some property sales may take place two or three years after a relationship is first established, he noted.

Property expos outside the Gulf Coast area don't hold much interest for Burks. He said an AAPG convention further away probably wouldn't attract him as an exhibitor "unless we really meet a lot of good contacts this year. Then, we wouldn't care where it was."

Expanding Horizons

John Hogg, chairman of AAPG's House of Delegates, thinks the PPM could grow into something very big.

"This is another opportunity for us to expand our horizons at our conference," Hogg said. "Maybe we can turn the PPM into a spring oil and gas (prospects) show."

Hogg is team leader for Atlantic Canada Exploration for PanCanadian Petroleum in Calgary. He said AAPG's prospect market is still taking its "initial steps" and will require time to develop fully.

"I think it will take a number of years," he said, "and maybe what will happen is that we develop a niche, a specialty in the local geological provinces where the convention is held each year."

PPM presenters will have the right crowd to evaluate their pitches, according to Ben Waring, a landman and president of Waring & Associates Corp. in New Orleans. At a gathering of exploration geologists, he said, presentations can be "as technically sophisticated as you like.

"You're going to get a group of exploration decision makers," he said. "Ostensibly, you have a more technical group at this convention. And you're going to have to get past the geologists on any exploration project."

Like other members of the PPM committee, Waring both applauded and agonized over the influence of the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE), held in Houston in January or February each year.

NAPE, presented by the American Association of Professional Landmen and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, has become the country's largest and most successful prospect and property show. While it demonstrates the potential for such venues, Waring said it left little interest for PPM early in the year.

The good news, however, is that since NAPE's conclusion, interest in AAPG's PPM has surged.

Waring is rooting for that success, in part because he visualizes an ongoing Gulf expo.

"Inside of me, I hope the Prospect and Property Marketplace is a precursor to having this kind of show regularly in New Orleans," he said.

Burks has exhibited at two other shows in addition to NAPE, and agreed that the industry needs more than a once-a-year property expo.

"That's not often enough for companies that are active," he said. "Some companies may be working up projects right now they won't be able to take to NAPE.

"Likewise, once they get them worked up, they can't afford to wait until next January or February."

Face-to-Face

The PPM will be designed for information flow, according to Zotkiewicz.

"We're putting in an area where people can make a Power Point presentation, if they want," he said. "We'll have a couple of screens where a walk-up audience can get an idea of what a prospect is all about."

Gina Godfrey, vice president of Petroleum Exchange in Denver, said her company will provide at least four computer "kiosk stations" for the PPM. The stations will be dedicated to information about PPM exhibitor offerings.

"This is the first year the PPM is as significant as it is," she said. "My hat's off to the New Orleans group for working so hard on this."

Petroleum Exchange also will maintain a Web site (petroWEB.com) where PPM exhibitors can display details about their properties. Godfrey acknowledges the power of the Internet for attracting attention to exploration prospects.

"The main advantage today is that it exponentially increases a person's exposure in the marketplace," she said. "Instead of having 10 people see (a prospect) in Houston, you have thousands of people around the world.

"The data rooms we provide on the Web are going to make paper-based, real-life data rooms obsolete," she added.

However, Godfrey doesn't think Web presentations will ever replace face-to-face dealmaking.

"In terms of information exchange, it's already changing the way the industry does business," she said. "But is it going to totally do away with the Petroleum Club? No."

Hogg agrees, believing the deal process will always involve direct discussion.

"I don't know if a geologist will ever not want to talk about a play with another geologist or a geophysicist," he said.

"Sure, a company may be able to put 15 types of deals on the Internet. But eventually we'll want to sit down with a geologist and see what direction things are taking and get his or her viewpoints."

No one's sure how many sales will be finalized at the PPM this year. Mason doesn't necessarily expect to see ink drying on contracts:

"Maybe not a lot of deals will be sealed at the conference," he said, "but it's a chance to set up time later to present information."

Still, thanks to having a sophisticated exploration crowd, some closings could take place immediately, according to Zotkiewicz.

"We're going to have a lot of exploration managers who can understand a deal right there," he said. "I have seen deals taken on the spot, but for the most part you have to evaluate. People who take deals right there really know the area they're looking at."

This year, the best feature of the PPM may be liquid resources.

"You keep the oil and gas prices up, and we're already seeing drilling pick up, that brings the investors back in," Zotkiewicz said. "These are people who've always been in the business.

"But now, they have money.