2013 was a landmark year for domestic oil drilling and a tough one for coal and biofuels. Read More
It's hard to imagine anyone better suited to covering the energy-investment waterfront than Robert Rapier.
Robert is no armchair analyst—he has two decades of in-the-trenches experience in a wide range of fossil fuel and biofuel technologies, including refining, natural gas production, gas-to-liquids, ethanol production and butanol production.
During a six-year stretch at ConocoPhillips, Robert ran a team of engineers in Scotland working on oil and gas projects in the North Sea.
For two years, Robert was an efficiency expert in a Texas petrochemical plant. The process changes he implemented saved the facility $9 million a year. He later worked as the Engineering Director for a Dutch environmental-technology company and provided engineering support for a Chinese facility the company was constructing.
Robert was also a butanol engineer in Germany for the Celanese Corporation, where he designed a novel butanol unit that cut production costs by $5 million per year.
In all, Robert has spent more than a dozen years working on liquid fuels technologies. Along the way he's picked up five patents, including one for a breakthrough way to convert ethane into ethylene (U.S. Patent 7,074,977).
Now, in addition to guiding readers to timely investments in Utility Forecaster and Rapier's Income Accelerator, Robert travels the world evaluating startup energy companies for deep-pocketed investors. After grilling management and assessing the technology on-site, he makes a go/no-go investment decision. His wealthy private investors and hedge fund backers trust him to make the right choice for the same reason we do: his vast real-world experience in just about every facet of the energy industry. If Robert votes thumbs-up, millions of dollars flow into these cutting-edge outfits.
Robert earned his master of science in chemical engineering and a bachelor of science in chemistry and mathematics (double major) at Texas A&M University. He tells us he was "this close" to finishing his Ph.D. before he decided he was having a lot more fun making money in energy stocks.
A prolific writer, Robert's articles have appeared in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor -- and he has been a featured expert on 60 Minutes and The History Channel. His new book, Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil (Apress, 2012), helps investors sort through doom and gloom, hype and misinformation to understand the true costs, benefits and trade-offs for each of our major energy options.
In what little spare time he has left, Robert consults for a number of energy projects, including biodiesel, ethanol, butanol and biomass gasification facilities.
Analyst Articles
Several energy issues have made big moves in recent weeks. But some knives aren’t worth catching and some waves not worth surfing, Robert writes in the latest chat followup. Read More
There are good reasons to prefer general partner KMI over its affiliate KMP, Robert writes in another monthly chat followup. Read More
Several energy issues have made big moves in recent weeks. But some knives aren’t worth catching and some waves not worth surfing, Robert writes in the latest chat followup. Read More
The coming wave of LNG export should push prices significantly higher, Robert Rapier argues in a chat question follow-up. Plus: Statoil and Atlantic Power aren’t the bargains they seem. Read More
The coming wave of LNG export should push prices significantly higher, Robert Rapier argues in a chat question follow-up. Plus: Statoil and Atlantic Power aren’t the bargains they seem. Read More
Our monthly chat featured plenty of questions about the MLP investments we don’t currently recommend. Here’s a partial rundown. Read More
Investors seeking to profit from the development of midstream services in one of the most dynamic shale plays have a growing number of options. Read More
The energy intensity of a project can have a vast effect on long-term profits. Here’s why the best oil sands operations will deliver. Read More
The key metric driving MLP returns has no universal definition. Here’s how to simplify the math and make sure the cash profit will sustain the distribution. Read More