Dan Yergin on ITOP

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Dan Yergin on ITOP

Kym Bolado:

And welcome to In the Oil Patch Radio Show. I’m your host Kym Bolado being joined by my co-host David Blackmon. And today we will be interviewing Dan Yergin, who is the Vice President of IHS Markit, and also the Chairman of CERAWeek who has just released a book, his latest book, which is called “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.” Daniel, welcome to In the Oil Patch Radio Show. 

Dan Yergin:

I’m delighted to be in the oil patch. Thank you.

Kym Bolado:

Well, you know, we were very excited to hear that you wanted to interview with us pertaining to your new book, which is called “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.” But before we get started with talking about the book, why you titled it, what you titled it, and other things inside the book, I want you to briefly tell me a little bit about IHS Markit for our listeners in CERAWeek. CERA is huge. We’ve attended a couple of years in a row, but tell us what is IHS Markit, what are your mission and goals? 

Dan Yergin:

Yes, well, IHS Markit was obviously a combination of a number of companies. The one where I started was called Sierra Cambridge Energy Research Associates. It goes way back, but IHS was originally an upstream data company that we merged into. But it has developed an automotive area that it works on, transportation, a whole host of areas, and now has merged with Markit. So we also have a big finance side. So we have about 16,000 employees around the world. But Texas and the world of shale is a very important concentration. And we have 800 people in our Houston office, and we work closely with the upstream industry in terms of analysis, data, software, helping them operate more efficiently. So, very deeply embedded CERAWeek grew out of our Cambridge Energy. And it’s, I think, regarded as a kind of premier global high level thought leader energy conference. And we bring about 6,000 people together every year in Houston, except in 2020, because of the pandemic, and a whole host of CEOs, energy ministers, government officials. And I think people find it a fantastic way to understand what’s happening, the industry what’s changing, what are the forces working on it, and what they should look forward to in terms of their own strategy. And increasingly in recent years, it’s also had a growing focus on technologies.