[Editor's Note: Hitisha Dadlani is the editor in chief of the TWA Editorial Board and is the author of previous TWA articles.]
The Q&A series features former The Way Ahead (TWA) editors in chief (EIC), highlighting their contributions and journeys as a learning opportunity for the current and future generation of TWA volunteers and our global audience.
This interview is with Thomas Shattuck, who served as EIC from October 2021–October 2022. He is an energy infrastructure attorney at Clifford Chance in Houston, where he focuses on M&A, joint venture, and project development transactions involving oil and gas, power generation, and other energy and infrastructure assets.
Previously, Shattuck was a research manager at the Deloitte Research Center for Energy & Industrials, where he analyzed trends in global energy markets, with a focus on LNG as well as upstream exploration and development. Before joining Deloitte, he worked as a market researcher at Wood Mackenzie covering deepwater and frontier oil and gas projects in North America. Shattuck also has hands-on experience in the oil and gas industry, having started his career as a field engineer for SLB in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hitisha Dadlani (HD): What are some of the key lessons you have learned through your time with TWA that have stayed with you?
Thomas Shattuck (TS): What makes TWA different from many other volunteer groups and publications I’ve been a part of is its global reach. Our readers and volunteers come from around the world, with a wide variety of careers, experiences, and perspectives. As an editor, this provided a lot of opportunities to produce a diverse array of articles on compelling topics that resonated with our broad audience. But there were also obstacles to managing such a large team spanning so many time zones. TWA challenged me to be better organized, communicate more clearly, and reach out to all our stakeholders.
Being organized was always critical, but what that meant evolved over time. When I first joined TWA, we were still primarily publishing print magazines, so there wasn’t a lot of flexibility: an article was either ready or it wasn’t. As a junior editor, my focus was keeping to a set schedule. Later, when I became a senior editor and then EIC, we shifted to publishing online, so each section could publish articles more or less when they were ready rather than in a specific month or quarter. As EIC, the challenge became making sure we were publishing high-quality articles regularly. Coordinating among the sections took a lot of work so that we could take advantage of the flexibility of online publishing while still delivering new articles each week for our readers.
Having both a global audience and a global group of volunteers meant that clear communication was critical. Growing up in the US, I didn’t always realize how much of what we write and say is regional. The same is true of technical jargon specific to certain fields, such as law, economics, and, in my case, cement engineering. At TWA, I had to learn to write in a way that was accessible to a broader audience, not just to people with backgrounds similar to mine. Those lessons applied not only to the articles I wrote and edited, but also to everyday activities like emails among the team.
Finally, working with a diverse team across multiple countries meant that I had to balance multiple stakeholders. TWA needs to publish articles that resonate with its audience while highlighting the technical topics SPE members expect. Beyond that, our volunteers are looking for opportunities to learn, grow professionally, and build relationships and networks. I had to learn how to effectively solicit input and turn it into action, so that TWA reflected not just my perspective, but those of our readers, writers, and editors.
HD: Your articles for TWA often explored the future of oil and gas and the energy transition. Your own career has also evolved across technical roles, energy markets, and energy law. Do these themes continue to resonate with your work today? And from your perspective, where do you see opportunities for TWA to contribute to these conversations going forward?
TS: I started in the industry as a cement engineer right around the time the shale boom took off in the US, while high oil prices were driving investment into the ultradeepwater projects where I worked at the time. Since then, we’ve been through several price cycles, and the industry has worked hard to cut costs through engineering optimization. At the same time, the world has grown more focused on environmental, social, and governance concerns across the energy industry, not just in oil and gas. We’re once again in a period of transition, with high oil prices driven by physical disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty over the past year.
Through all that change, what has stayed the same is the importance of energy to the global economy and the economic interconnectedness of countries on opposite sides of the world. High prices and geopolitical instability always revive talk of the energy industry’s resiliency; when prices drop, the talk fades, but the concerns never go away. The US shale boom drove massive growth in global LNG liquefaction and export capacity, much of it now sold in Europe and Asia, offsetting declining production from places like Russia. Disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up oil, fuel, and fertilizer prices well beyond the Middle East. What’s different from the price upswing 10 or 15 years ago is that wind, solar, batteries, and geothermal have now moved from technically to commercially viable, and that shift is likely to accelerate as costs keep falling and these technologies grow more insulated from conflict.
For TWA contributors, and SPE editors more broadly, that means focusing not just on petro-technical skills but on how engineering skill sets apply across the broader energy ecosystem. Some transfer easily to geothermal power or carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Others, like solar, wind, and battery technologies, sit further from traditional subsurface engineering, but the ability to manage projects, communicate clearly, and align stakeholders applies no matter the industry. TWA is well positioned to help spread both the technical and soft skills that matter across engineering, management, and business roles.
HD: How have you continued to create an impact within SPE and the wider volunteering community after your term with TWA?
TS: After my TWA EIC term, I’ve spent much of my time volunteering for my local section here in Houston, as well as for other organizations such as the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC). Over the past 5 years, I’ve served the SPE Gulf Coast Section as director at large, communications chair, and treasurer, and as an advisor to its business development study group, which hosts events focused on the business side of oil and gas. I’ve also served as a subcommittee chair for OTC Brasil since 2018 and recently joined the program committee for OTC Houston. I’ve been particularly focused on organizing and moderating events that combine the technical, legal, and economic aspects of our industry.
HD: What advice would you give to the next generation of TWA volunteers, specially to those taking on leadership roles within TWA?
TS: In my experience, you get more out of volunteering the more you put into it, TWA is no different. As a junior editor, that means taking the lead on coming up with article ideas, taking the pen on writing and editing, and taking ownership of the final product. TWA gives you plenty of opportunities to take on projects and gain visibility in the industry in a way that is hard to achieve early in a new career. As I took on more senior roles at TWA, such as lead editor for the interview section, I found that the SPE connection opened doors to talk to and work with people I wouldn’t otherwise have had access to. I also found that being a senior editor at TWA was a great way to connect with the broader SPE network beyond my section and to become more involved at the regional and global level. My advice is to take TWA volunteering seriously and put in the effort to learn new skills and meet new people.
