C.H. Scott Rees
Editor's note: This profile is part of Hart Energy's 50th anniversary Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers of the past 50 years and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
The announcement that Scott Rees had been picked to succeed the founders at Netherland, Sewell and Associates was met with a puzzled response.
Longtime NSAI client Rodney Kubicek, now managing director with MUFG Bank, said the succession announcement was made by Fred Sewell in the Dallas office, with a phone connection to the Houston location. In Kubicek’s words, “(When) Fred announced that the new president would be Scott Rees, the Houston contingent took the phone off mute and asked, ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’”
To be fair, Rees had vaulted over others with more seniority to follow Clarence Netherland and Sewell when the latter retired in 2008. Soon, congratulatory and affirming calls from those who’d been passed over started to flow in.
Rees himself is quick to deflect any honors, insisting to Hart Energy that all he’s done is to be “a light hand managing a group of very talented individuals.” Indeed, the company as a whole has, from the beginning, maintained a reputation as the gold standard for research and evaluations.
When he was named CEO, the shale revolution was starting. He noted, “Netherland Sewell had a reputation of being able to look at all the data—and since the shale play was out of the ordinary, those shale plays, we were much more about the data and how do we chase that?
“My role in the firm was to make sure we were open to our clients’ ideas, (but) we were trying to get to the best answer—not the client’s answer, not the Netherland Sewell answer, but what is the best answer for the data there?” To help clients trust answers that might surprise them, NSAI’s people take care to explain the whole process.
For Rees, it’s peace of mind about the data’s accuracy. “I like being able to sleep at night,” he said.
That approach carries weight.
“In the private equity houses that we work with, a Netherland Sewell report is pretty much the only thing these guys want to see,” Kubicek said. He said he sees Rees’s level-headed mentoring and leadership as keys to maintaining that reputation. Kubicek added that the dedication to finding the best answer while carefully and successfully navigating sometimes entrenched preconceptions is a company-wide attribute.
Rees’s decision to join the oil industry after earning his B.A. in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida in 1981 came when he chose Exxon over other options.
In 1984, he was involved in drilling Exxon’s first horizontal well with 300-foot laterals. While that project didn’t work as hoped, about 20 years later Rees and company would be in the middle of the horizontal revolution.
NSAI had already hired a number of Exxon alums and reached out to Rees in late 1987. He started there shortly thereafter.
Rees anticipated broadening his experience on what he called a “five-year plan.” As of 2023, he is at 36 and counting.
—Paul Wiseman, Contributing Editor