00:00:00 Speaker 1
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00:00:26 Speaker 2
The energy pipeline is your lifeline to all things oil and gas, to drill down deep into the issues impacting our industry. From the frack site to the future of sustainability, hear more about industry issues, tools, and resources to streamline and modernize the future of oil and gas. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline.

00:00:49 KC
Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast. Today our topic is land acquisition for oil and gas exploration and production. We're fortunate to have Vincent Caruso, managing director at Percheron LLC as our guest. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline Podcast, Vin.

00:01:07 Vincent Caruso
Thank you very, very much for having me. I certainly appreciate this opportunity. Thank you.

00:01:16 KC
Good. Yeah, great to have you. Great to have you. So Vin, can you take a few minutes to share a bit of your background with our listeners, please?

00:01:23 Vincent Caruso
Born and raised in New York. Wound up going to law school, originally studying maritime oil and gas. Worked there for a few years, eventually moved to Houston. And when in Rome, I guess. I started at a precursor to Percheron, OGM Land Company, about 20 years ago now, and I have been there rising through the ranks and I guess learning my business for about 20 years. On the land acquisition side, about five, six years ago, a colleague and I decided to start looking into what we could do with our skills, started moving from oil and gas into other fields, such as hard minerals and renewables. But at this point we work across all of those areas.

00:02:15 KC
Oh, great. Great. Super, super. Well, so this conversation just proves that lawyers and engineers can actually communicate well with each other. So I appreciate you coming on. It's great to have you here, and I'm anxious to ask you some questions and glean a lot of knowledge from you with regard to land acquisition. So anyway, I'm an engineer and many individuals that are involved with oil and gas projects, whether it be ENP, pipelines, downstream, whatever the case may be, are engineers like me. We're very analytical and very much into looking at solving problems analytically. So how do the requirements and facets of land acquisition, which to me seems to be a little bit more of a softer skill, relate or contrast to my training and experience from analytical perspective?

00:03:15 Vincent Caruso
That's a great question and it's a great topic, and it's something that we see real life, real time. You've got one half of the industry that is, like you said, very analytical, and I think the beginning of analytics is identifying the problem. And then once you identify the problem, you can hopefully flow into the pipeline or the protocol that allows you to get to a solution. And on the other side, you have an issue where the best answer at the outset is usually, "I don't know, it depends." And those two mindsets do not work together. At least they don't work together naturally. When you find a way to create a bridge, actually they're quite useful together. But I think that's the essence of the problem. That's the essence of the issue, because this industry doesn't work. Land acquisition doesn't work if you don't have all sorts of different specialties in it. And you really have to have the ability, when you're in land acquisition, to assume everything you're looking at is at the outset of mystery. And then from there, you start picking up clues as to what's going to eventually get you to where you need to go. And a lot of times it can be stumbling in the dark. A lot of times you're not able to forecast as much as you'd like. You're not able to tell someone necessarily what the next step is, because you don't even know what the first question is. And that can honestly cause some consternation. It can cause some friction when the two groups are trying to work together. A few years ago, and KC, obviously you were a large part of this effort, we brought an engineering group into Percheron, and it's been interesting watching those two groups come together. And what's starting to happen as we get to know each other, we start to get to know each other personally, we start to trust each other. You're actually now, rather than having butting of heads with different approaches, you're starting to see almost like a force multiplying effect, where the two groups are able to take their own initial start positions, and really make the process and the product better. So I don't think it has to be seen as adversarial. I think the differences have to be noted between the two groups and the two mindsets. And I think as long as you have the ability to, I guess, respect the other side's needs and point of view, you can actually really push forward nicely.

00:05:43 KC
It's interesting, we did a podcast interview a few weeks ago with Rana Alnasir-Boulos, and we started talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And at the end of the day, it came down to diversity of backgrounds and ways of thinking. And to me, getting a team together, in that particular case, it was introducing women to the project. But here we're introducing just different backgrounds to the project and looking at things from an analytical perspective like I do, versus a softer skill and the background of land acquisition, and that type of thing. It makes for a very good team with that diversity, at least my opinion.

00:06:36 Vincent Caruso
I fully agree with that. And to be honest, I agree with that. You're not going to get anywhere in this industry if you don't have that. When you look at land acquisition in general, I don't know when I walk out the door on a new land acquisition project, I have no idea who I'm going to be negotiating with. And you are in a situation where I cannot force you to give me what I need, which means that I have to adapt to you. In this point, I'm saying you as the landowner, not you as an engineer anymore. Although that also certainly being able to work with a group, and formulate a cohesive plan and strategy is essential as well. But when I'm talking to landowners, I don't get to choose who my landowners are. More often than not, the land has been selected because of any one of almost infinite parameters that suit the project needs. And my job, our job is to find a way to get either a portion of that acreage, or all of that acreage, or some of the rights to that acreage, and to get those individuals to want to work with us. And in many cases also not work with our competition. And if you're not able to form some type of a relationship with the individual, if you're not able to form a bridge, you're not going to get anywhere ever. And so, you're going to be dealing with people across every spectrum you can imagine.

00:08:01 KC
Very interesting. So you've got to be able to maneuver within a field that you're not familiar with. So let's talk about this. What are some of the essential elements, or qualities, or characteristics that are required of an individual participating in land acquisition effort? First step, not be an engineer?

00:08:26 Vincent Caruso
Engineers are a necessary role in this process. And the engineering mindset, the financial mindset, the legal mindset, those are all necessary parts of this process. In terms of the negotiating side of this, quite often if the individual is not able to come off of that very firm or rote way of doing things, it is going to cause problems. The basic, I guess, attributes that you have to have, and these are very basic. This is not really something that can be taught in a school. You have to enjoy a mystery. You have to be comfortable with walking into a room and not knowing what's going to happen next. You can't plan everything out. You have to be willing to think on your feet. You have to be willing to change direction, sometimes very quickly with no warning. You have to be able to prepare in advance multiple options, just because if option A, B and C don't work out, you've got to have a D, E and F. That's not outside of the realm of possible when you're doing this. But I think, and honestly this last one goes with probably every profession or task, you have to be honest. Not only does your reputation quite often precede you, but it does not take a human being very long to sniff out whether you're honest or whether you're dishonest. And the second somebody assumes or forms a belief that you're dishonest, you're done, period. And that you're not going to recover from that. So honesty is I think a very important one. And the final one is, you have to be willing and able to respect people. People who you might not agree with, people who might be different than you, because again, these people have a choice, okay? They do not have to work with you. There's no reason that they're going to be forced to do what you want. And quite often, when I see just an abject failure on a project, it's because someone wasn't properly respecting the other individual, and their needs, and where they come from, and what makes them tick. So those are the general facets that you need in this business.

00:10:31 KC
That's very interesting. And you talked about honesty, and talked about reputation, and that type of thing, and the people that precede you and that type of thing. So with all of that combined, there've got to be some major roadblocks or difficulties that you normally experience when acquiring land. I think you mentioned a couple of them there, but what are some of the big roadblocks or difficulties that you'll normally experience?

00:11:03 Vincent Caruso
I'd say the first one, the general topic that I put this under would be understanding worth and value. For any acquisition, you need four things. And this is whether it's a tangible asset, a real property asset, it's really anything, you need four things. First, whatever it is that you want to transact has to be legal. There are things that you can ask for that are not legal, and that's just a simple first-year law school understanding. You need to have a seller that's willing to sell. You need to have a buyer that's willing to buy. Those are points two and three. And there are some issues with both of those, because more often than not, the buyer is going to be approaching the seller in an unsolicited fashion, and that can cause some severe headaches. So those are some issues that we'll probably talk about a little bit later on in this. But the fourth topic, and this I think is the biggest sticking point, is the two parties have to come to some idea and some agreement as to what the worth or value is of that asset. And that is both a simple sentence to say, but it is incredibly difficult to arrive at that agreement, when you're talking about something as complex as attractive land.

00:12:25 KC
Can you drill down into that a little bit? How do you go about determining the value of the land? Or am I getting things out of context and asking inaudible

00:12:35 Vincent Caruso
That is not a rabbit hole. This is what land acquisition is about, okay? Any transaction. I mean, you think about whether you're buying a box of cereal at the store, whether you're buying a car, or whether you're buying the North 40. You have to understand what you're exchanging, what value you're exchanging. The simplest way to look at value is, and this is the starting point, and this can only be the starting point, and if you end here as well, this causes massive problems. But you're looking at a market price, what does the market tell you that tract of land is worth? And that can be anything from a realtor telling you what that might go for on the open market, that can be doing a comparative sales analysis to look back a year or two, and find out what similar tracts in that location might have sold for. And I think that is providing a fantastic floor for this discussion. That tells you where your negotiation should start. Sadly, many people end there, because they figure, "You know what? If this is what someone is willing to pay, then this is what the market says it's worth. I'm not paying any more than that, give or take a few percentage points." And I think that's a terminal error, that's a terminal flaw. And that quite frankly is where the vast majority of land acquisition attempts crash and burn. And the reason for that is, value has many meanings to many people, okay? The market may say that this is a $100,000 at tract of land, but the market is not the landowner. The landowner is who you're negotiating with. You're not negotiating with the community. And the landowner, sure, he understands the base value, or they understand the base value might be $100,000, but they're not just growing corn on this tract of land. They may be using this as the site of their irrigation hub. They may be using this as their tool and equipment yard. This may be the very center of operations that stretch for half a county. And this is just where they've put that central nexus point, where they're able to work five other tracts. And so, all of a sudden this tract that the community says should be worth $100,000 takes on an outsized value to that landowner, and importantly to their operations. And so, you have to go beyond just market value. Now you have to start looking at operational value to the landowner. And then from there, the third part, because again, realize this is a conversation between the landowner, the current landowner and the company, or the individual seeking to acquire the tract of land. You have to understand what that tract land is worth to you and to your effort. You have to understand your own project economics. And one of the things that I run into, one of the problems that I run into quite frequently, is quite often companies are very, very good about understanding the costs and the values associated with the endeavor that they're trying to embark on. But quite frequently, they don't apply that same rigor or understanding to some of the input costs that are going to go into that. And so, they haven't necessarily decided what they think the tract of land is worth to them. Perfect example, about halfway through last year, we started negotiating on behalf of an entity, and they were forcing us to stick to a total all-in-purchase price of about $250,000. They were forcing us. And we stayed there for three or four months and weren't making much headway with the landowner. And by the time we got to September, October, the crunch time had started to creep up for this company. They had people they had to answer to, they had investors they had to answer to. And so, they came to us and said, "Look, honestly, our project economics allow us to pay up to a million dollars for this tract of land, so go get it." And we wound up eventually, I think we all in, we were around $430,000 for this pickup, but for four or five months, we had wasted everyone's time at a quarter of their project economic value. Now, I love saving above more so probably than the next person, but at a point you become, and I know this is funny to say when you're talking about large numbers, but you can become penny wise in a pound foolish at any price point. And so, really when you're looking at the first major hurdle of any endeavor, if you cannot come to an agreement as to valuation, as to what it's worth, you're not going anywhere.

00:17:18 KC
So with that, we're talking about buying surface land in fee, right?

00:17:25 Vincent Caruso
That's one of the things, yes. Yes. Let's keep it simple and stay there.

00:17:30 KC
Yeah, I mean, yeah, but there are options leasing this, and doing that, and all of that kind of thing that are, if you will, arrows in your quiver when it comes to negotiating. But for all intents and purposes, buying the property and fee is the ultimate and what you'd like to do.

00:17:55 Vincent Caruso
Yes, you can buy the fee, you can have an option to purchase, because quite frequently there are going to be things that the company needs to do in between securing the access and securing the site, and actually committing to fully funding the effort, so that there are quite often you're doing an option campaign, and then you could lease it. But yes, in a perfect world as an endeavor, if you have the financial ability to do so, you definitely want to own whatever it is you're working on.

00:18:26 KC
Gotcha. So earlier you talked about the value to the landowner and you talked about a storage yard, or getting equipment here and all of that kind of stuff. So that seems to be an inherent issue with regard to competition, if you will. You're competing against what the owner wants to do with that property. Do you run into other competition, or is that a-

00:18:58 Vincent Caruso
Yes, yes, yes.

00:18:59 KC
...competition that you run into?

00:19:00 Vincent Caruso
Competition is ever present, and it's present on many levels, and you have to be dealing with it. You have to be dealing with it before you even step into the field. Typically, what we'll do first is we'll conduct a stakeholder analysis to figure out what other entities might be out there, that will have either a stake or some type of concern vested or otherwise in this tract of land, because competition is like value. It's another one of those words that seems simple, but it actually, the more you think about it, the more convoluted and complex it gets. There are at least three tiers of competition. The first type of competition is that tract of land that might be essential to your project might also be essential to other entities hoping to acquire that land for their project. And they can be entities in your field, which typically you'll be aware of those, you'll be aware of how they work. You'll be more or less aware of the project economics and the funding they can bring to bear. But quite often you may be competing for a tract of land that another industry may have its eye on, and some of these industries may have a lot more in their bank account than you do.

00:20:09 KC
There are Walmarts going up everywhere.

00:20:12 Vincent Caruso
Yes, and if Amazon decides it wants a tract of land for a warehouse, you are not going to win. When a power plant decides it wants to expand into the adjoining tract for any one of several reasons, you're not going to win. Sometimes it's better just to tip your hat and move on down the road. So that's competition from an organizational point of view, but then realize there's also community level competition. And while that's not direct competition, it's competing for use. So they may not want to buy the tract, they may not want to have anything to do with the tract. They may want their roads free for travel. They may not want you putting a facility there that's going to have heavy trucks slowly rolling in and out, 24 hours a day. They may not want something that's going to create noise or dust pollution right next to an elementary school. And so, you may have community issues that you're going to have to deal with, either at the zoning level or the permitting issue. So you're going to have competition issues there. And you touched on this, and this I think is essential. If you're not buying the landowner out and sending them happily on their way to retirement in Arizona or Florida, then that landowner themself might become someone who's in competition against you. And the landowner will certainly be asking this, can their operations continue to survive if they A, surrender this tract of land to you and lose it from their portfolio, and B, if they have to directly compete with you? There's competition at all levels all the time.

00:21:50 KC
Interesting, interesting. Do you have other difficulties that you run into besides the valuation and the competition?

00:21:59 Vincent Caruso
I think some of what you run into, and this is where we start to move a little bit away from... This is where, and some of the engineers, Percheron and I have had some phenomenal discussions, because this is where I think the approach that's taken has to be a little far afield from I think what an engineer would typically be comfortable with. Because what you're doing is you're going into, I think the softer side of human interrelations, the dynamics of that. And so, some of what we run into is, for instance, the manner of approach. How is this landowner approached? I've seen some absolute tragedies, where someone on a corporate level has decided what something is worth. They go out and to them it works, on their whiteboard it works, it works at their office. But when they go out into the field and they present that, and they meet with a landowner who's not really, I guess acquiescing to that, you start to see some friction. Because on the one side, they're looking at this as a logical presentation of, "Hey, here's what it's worth. Why would you be illogical?" On the other side of that, the people who do best in this, I think this field are people who can sympathize, I guess with the landowner, realize that a landowner, you have to look at things from their perspective, and a landowner's going to have at least a three-stage analysis. When again, and I'm assuming this is an unsolicited approach, because there are solicited approaches, that's a totally different scenario, but let's just, the vast majority of this will be done on an unsolicited basis, so let's just stick with that for the moment. When you have an unsolicited landowner, and they don't immediately kick you off their property, which happens frequently, then that landowner is going to do a three-stage analysis throughout this project. The first question that they have to come to terms with is, do I, I being the landowner, do I want to do this deal? Does it work for me? Does it work for my family? Does it work for my operation? Once they come to a yes on that, and sometimes for no logical reason whatsoever, the answer is no. Sometimes for emotional reasons, the answer is no, and you're never going to be able to combat that. Everybody in this business has the story of, you're speaking to the widow or the widower who has lived on the land for 40, 50 years, and this is where they came after they got married. This is where they raised a family, this is where they made a living. The partner has now passed on, and they are not leaving that tract of land until they do. And you, you can add as many zeros as you want. You are not going to overcome that. Once they get past that first question, the next question they're going to ask is, "Okay, I want to do this. Do I want to do this with you?" Now, this is the one place in the equation, in the process, where forming a relationship is essential. This is where the trustworthiness comes in, this is where the honesty comes in. This is where, you know what? There are five other people that want this, but I'm going to do it with you, because you seem like someone who I want to work with for any number of reasons. And then the third, final, and honestly most important part, now we get to the money and the valuation. Are the numbers right? And I think where a lot of these efforts go astray is, people can handle knowing that test number one and test number two are happening, but quite frequently they assume, okay, as we now proceed into the money portion of it, okay, you know what? They want to work with me. They like me, I can offer them less, or I don't have to go as far above market or operational value as maybe I should, or maybe I have to, because they like me, because we've had lunch together, because we have some similar interests. And the disconnect here is, once a landowner makes the emotional decision, and at this point it is an emotional decision, once the landowner makes the emotional decision to separate from the tract of land, emotions are now out, emotions are done. What's left now is do the numbers work? Do they work for me? Do they work for my enterprise? Do they work for my family? And if the answer is no to that, I could be your brother. I could be your best friend. You're not selling me the tract land.

00:26:27 KC
Interesting, interesting. Let's delve down into the discussion about likeability. And I want to sell to you, I'm a pipeline guy. I've run into situations where, right-of-way guys have gone in and just made a landowner mad, and just infuriated them, kicked them off the property and all of that. And then we send in another right-of-way agent that's a little smoother, a lot more relaxed, and spends time getting to know the person before trying to talk about easements and this, that and the other, and eventually getting the right-of-way that we need. I assume that you all have the same issues when it comes to reputation as far as previous representatives, or maybe your client has burned a bridge or two with this guy's cousin on the other side of the road, and so it makes it very difficult for you to deal with the landowner and get that likeability box checked, so that you can start negotiating price.

00:27:46 Vincent Caruso
It's absolutely an issue.

00:27:47 KC
Is that an issue?

00:27:47 Vincent Caruso
And you know what? I like that it's an issue, because I think it's probably a good thing even in year 2024. I think it's a good thing that people's reputation should precede them. I think the way people behave matters, the way we treat others should matter, and you should be held accountable if you don't do that right, you don't do that correctly. We run into that all the time. Usually it's not on our end, because we do a fairly decent job of sorting through the individuals who we work with on our end to make sure that we have the right personality type. I realize everyone can have a bad day, and then that certainly happens, but we're not going to put someone in the field who cannot get along well with others. So that typically is not an issue for me with my own groups. But what we absolutely run into all the time is, we're coming in on the back end of possibly even our own client having, usually it's not that they behave badly. Usually there seems to be an instinct lately of once I get what I need, I drop negotiations, or I ghost, or I stop communicating. And the problem is that's somewhat short-sighted, because typically you're going to go back to the same pool of individuals again and again and again with future needs. And so, a lot of times the reputation issue is not a bad actor issue. It's more of a, they don't treat people correctly, they don't continue a relationship on that. Once they get what they need, they're done. If they don't get what they need, they're out of here, that sort of thing. So I think the likeability issue, while that's obviously very general, and I think it's something that is essential to cultivate. People only work with people they don't like when they're under duress. Are there landowners out there in America who are under financial duress? Absolutely there are. They're actually very few and far between, at least talking about being desperate enough to have to work with whoever comes across their gate line. So these individuals have a choice. You have to recognize that you're just one of several choices that they have. And so again, it's going to come down to the numbers. So you cannot just assume that the value of your smile is going to be able to take zeros off of a check, but who you are and how you behave will be the one that gets you into the conversation about money.

00:30:25 KC
Understood, understood. Very good, very good. Any other roadblocks you'd like to talk about? Challenges that you guys face, that engineers like me never consider?

00:30:39 Vincent Caruso
I think there are two. First, we're going to look at, and the first one's simple. The second one I think is a little more involved. The first one I typically call familiarity with the process. If you're going to buy something from someone who lives in, let's say the Permian Basin in West Texas, not only are they going to be familiar with the process, but whoever they rely on to review your offer is very likely, assuming they're local, is very likely going to be familiar with the process. Their accountants, their attorneys, their consultants, their managers. They're going to have been brought up in the business in the area, and they're going to know what's expected of them. But let's say that the interest that you're dealing with is not someone who currently lives on the land on site, but it's someone who got this from something their grandparents or great-grandparents bought, and they now live outside of Portland, Maine or Seattle, Washington. They have the same ownership stake that you may have to be negotiating for or negotiating with, but now all of a sudden when they're taking your contracts and your offers to their assistants, and consultants, and accountants, and attorneys, that level of expertise is no longer there. And quite frequently we find ourselves bogged down in trying to come across as not a salesperson, because we're not disinterested in the process. We want the process to work. It's very difficult to start from that standpoint and then have to convince an individual that you're trustworthy. You come off like a snake oil salesman, even though you're farthest from. So one of the hurdles that we come into quite frequently is, it's amazing how small the United States can be sometimes. It's amazing how landowners can be hundreds or thousands of miles away from the tract of land you're trying to buy. And there's not always a familiarity with how things work in that area or on that tract of land. And this is a real actual hurdle. So that's I think one of the issues that we deal with. That's something that once we identify it, there are ways to get through it. Usually, I mean, anything dealing with human personalities, you can't guarantee the outcome. All it takes is someone saying, "Hey, I don't trust this person, don't deal with them," and you're not going to overcome that. But I guess the last thing that we run into is, and again, this is now assuming that you're approaching someone unsolicited and you are not removing them from the equation forever. So the end result of this acquisition is not them packing up and spending life in an RV, or in a condo in Naples, Florida. They're still going to be there. Most of the land that we're talking about is not inner city. It's not in the suburbs. Most of the land that we're talking about in this conversation is rural land. And not that communities are not important everywhere. Of course, communities are essential in the inner city or they're essential in the suburbs, but the communities in rural areas, again, just as essential as those other areas, have a far greater attachment to the land. And so, now what you're trying to do is, you're trying to acquire something that has a tremendous value, not only to that individual landowner, but to that community. And what you have to be aware of going in is, you have to figure out whether or not whatever specific enterprise you're going to conduct on that tract of land, is it something the community wants? Is it something that's going to benefit the community? What's the purpose of that? Because that landowner, he goes to church with the members of their community. They're going to see them in the store, they're going to see them at Dairy Queen, they're going to see them at the feed store. Again, assuming that they're going to stick around and continue to be a part of that community. It is a big deal for them to allow you to do something on a tract of land in that community, that they know the community doesn't want. And there are times when money just can't buy that out and buy that off. And so, one of the things that I've found works extremely well is, sometimes a company and a land negotiator had to take a step back. You have to stop staring at the tree and look at the forest, and we know what benefit will be given to the landowner. There's going to be some type of valuable consideration. Usually money, sometimes it could be an acreage swap, but usually it's money that's going to be given to that landowner, so we know what's in it for them. But sometimes when you run into this reluctance or this hesitancy on the part of the landowner, because they're honestly trying to defend their community, as would anyone in any of the other areas, but again, this center's on land, you take a step back and you ask, okay, what can I do to help the community? What do they need? And sometimes if you can answer that and you can become a champion for that community, now all of a sudden the equation changes. Now, you're no longer a detriment, now all of a sudden you're someone they want to work with. Again, nothing that I've mentioned in this past 15 or 20 minutes of talking, this isn't stuff that is not easy to put on a whiteboard at the outset of a project and say, "Okay, here are your issues and here's where we're going to take steps A, B, and C here. We're going to do D, E, and F here, and here's how we're going to put a timeline on this, and here's what..." You can't do that, because you're dealing with human emotions and human relationships. And so, the problems that you run into here, to go back to what we started talking about at the outset, you have to like a mystery and you have to be willing to shift on the fly. You have to be willing to see whatever impediments or obstacles are in front of you, and you have to be willing to react accordingly.

00:36:47 KC
So what a daunting task. What's the average success rate in these acquisitions, processes?

00:36:55 Vincent Caruso
Changes by industry, and I'd say the two main types of land acquisition, or the two main motivations for land acquisition, you look on the, let's say the oil and gas and the hard mineral side. Typically, those projects start with either a geologist or an engineer, reservoir engineer, someone pointing at a map and saying, "I need to be here. The project needs to be here." And the reason for that is, whatever mineral, or substance, or oil, whatever it's that you're looking for, is likely at that point on the map, and not anywhere else, certainly not maybe in an economically recoverable option. And so all of a sudden, the project becomes hyper focused on acquiring access and rights to that tract of land. And so, in those cases, you're going to have a relatively high success rate, because you have to, because the whole project goes away. The whole endeavor goes away. Maybe the funding, and the financing, and the investors go away. If you don't do that, it's like anything else. The more you have to have something, the harder you're going to fight for it. And so, if you're going to stay in business, you're easily over 50, possibly even over 75% acquisition success there, because if you don't, you're not in business anymore, and your reputation will suffer as a result. Look at the other side of the world though, whether it's the renewable industry, whether it's in certain cases the warehousing industry, where all I need is a tract that fits certain parameters, and as long as it fits those parameters, I don't care where it is. Well, now all of a sudden you have too many options. It's not infinite, obviously, but when one track is as good as the next, what I've found is quite frequently, and this is just, I think this is a standard response. You're not going to fight for something you don't have to have. If you can just as easily go two miles down the road, or 10 miles down the road, or one county over, you're not going to fight for it. And so, the end result there is your success rates, at least at the initial stages, start to fall way off the mark. And you're lucky if you have a 15 or 20% success rate. But that's considered normal, because again, if you're looking at it from, hey, you know what, we can be anywhere here. Well, yeah, you're going to get somewhere, but you're going to have a lot of failures along the way. So again, that question greatly depends on the nature of the effort that you're leading.

00:39:44 KC
Gotcha. Gotcha. So our time is running out here, Vin, and I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and we'll try to get you back to talk more about this. Is there something that you'd like to say in a minute or two to tie a bow on our discussion today?

00:40:03 Vincent Caruso
I guess the only bow that I would tie is that this business has probably kept me as a confirmed optimist about people in this country. You meet, and if you do it right, you take the time to meet a lot of really, really good people, and they take the time to tell you their problems and what makes them tick. And you realize that there are a lot of competent individuals out there that you're very comfortable living around. So I think that's how I tie this in a bow. But I just wanted to take a moment to certainly express my gratitude for you having me on today. This has been a wonderful process. I've known you for several years. I want to say thank you genuinely.

00:40:44 KC
Well, thanks. Thank you very much for taking the time to visit with us today. Okay, so if anyone would like to know more about EMP land acquisition, or frankly Vin mentioned renewable land acquisition, et cetera, you can find Percheron on the web at percheronllc.com. That's P-E-R-C-H-E-R-O-N L-L-C dot com. That's like the horse. So thanks to all of you for tuning into this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast, sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for podcast topics, feel free to email me at KC.Yost@OGGN.com. I also want to thank my producer Anastasia Willison Duff and everyone at the Oil and Gas Global Network for making this podcast possible. Find out more about other OGGN podcasts at oggn.com. This is KC Yost saying goodbye for now. Have a great week and keep that energy flowing through the pipeline.

00:41:50 Speaker 2
Come back next week for another episode of the Energy Pipeline, a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network. To learn more, go to oggn.com.