For nearly 50 years, Mr. Brooks has been actively engaged in the oil patch in various roles. He has been an energy securities analyst, an oilfield service company manager, a consultant to energy company managements and a director of various oilfield service companies. Since early 2005, Mr. Brooks has been engaged in consulting as an advisor to PPHB LP, a boutique oilfield service investment banking firm, where he provides proprietary research for the firm’s partners and analysts. PPHB also distributes Musings From the Oil Patch, the highly regarded energy newsletter authored by Mr. Brooks since 1999.
During his career as a Wall Street energy and oilfield service securities analyst, Mr. Brooks was recognized as a Wall Street Journal All-Star analyst. For the eight years from 1997 to 2005, Mr. Brooks headed the oilfield service equity research team at CIBC World Markets and before that for four years was the senior oilfield service analysts with the New Orleans-based energy research firm, Howard Weil. Prior to that, Mr. Brooks was a member of the senior management team of ENSCO International, the Dallas-based international offshore contract drilling company. He was responsible for corporate development, financial projects, investor relations, and he managed the legal department and was the company’s Corporate Secretary.
In the 1980s, Mr. Brooks developed the consulting arm of Offshore Data Services where he assisted industry participants, investors and lenders in developing their corporate strategies, executing mergers and acquisitions and in valuing offshore assets. During the industry downturn, Mr. Brooks was an active participant in helping companies and lenders in restructuring efforts. As a result of that experience, Mr. Brooks was appointed by the United States District & Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas as its expert on offshore markets and equipment values in the bankruptcy of Global Marine, at the time one of the largest offshore drilling contractors and the largest industry bankruptcy filing. Mr. Brooks also assisted the U.S. Maritime Administration in its numerous bankruptcy cases involving offshore supply vessel and drilling rig companies, as well as helping various commercial banks and other lenders.
Mr. Brooks has served on the boards of directors of several oilfield service companies and on advisory boards of companies associated with the energy business. At the present time, he is the lead director, acting chairman and chair of the corporate governance committee of Trican Well Service Ltd., Canada’s largest pressure pumping company. Mr. Brooks has also been involved in the Texas electricity retailing market.
An Economics graduate of the University of Connecticut, Mr. Brooks also has an M.S. degree in Economics from Cornell University. He started his investment career in 1969, and received his Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 1975. He is an active member of the Houston Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors, and is also a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors in Canada. Mr. Brooks is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, as well as the National Association of Petroleum Investment Analysts, an organization he headed for two years. Mr. Brooks is married, has two grown children and four granddaughters, and lives in Houston, Texas.