Land Power Institute

Matthew Peters

Head of Land Acquisition, ENGIE North America

Matt Peters founded Paramount Land, Inc. in 2008, which grew into the state’s largest full-service lease brokerage, providing wind and oil and gas leasing, mineral title, and permitting services across the Mid-Continent. 

Matt later joined ENGIE North America where he built the land team that helped advance the North American portfolio to almost 12 GW (Q1 2026) helping make ENGIE the seventh largest renewable IPP in the US.  As head of land, he currently manages a team of professionals focused on community outreach, land acquisition, and operational land relations across the U.S. and Canadian portfolio. 

Kyle Reynolds

Managing Member, RBG Permian

Kyle B. Reynolds, JD, CPL, & Immediate Past President of the American Association of Professional Landmen. He’s a seasoned pro in the energy sector with a knack for making things happen. Kyle’s journey has taken him from leading teams at Chesapeake Energy and Energen Resource Corp. to his current role as a managing member at RBG Permian. When he's not busy with all things land-related, Kyle enjoys cooking, exploring new places, diving into a good book, and passionately supporting the Arkansas Razorbacks. He's also a proud father of 3 and the entrepreneurial spirit behind Benjamin Lee Bison (a direct-to-consumer meat business), Bryant Moore law firm, and Greenway Capital Partners (a real estate investment firm).

Reynolds and his wife, Amy, have three beautiful children: Lila, Anne Douglas and Hardin. He enjoys cooking, traveling, reading, and all things Razorbacks sports, including writing weekly articles for The Pig Sty.

Benjamin Sebree

General Counsel, Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance

Benjamin W. Sebree, Esq.    

Ben Sebree is an attorney and well-known governmental relations practitioner (deciphered, that means lobbyist). Among other clients, Ben currently serves as General Counsel for the Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance, the trade association representing the geothermal energy industry in Texas.  Additionally, having served as Vice-President and General Counsel for the Texas Oil and Gas Association, having been appointed by Governor Perry to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, having been elected to the Governing Council of the Oil, Gas and Energy Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, and possessing a long and effective career in Austin, Sebree's governmental and legal expertise are well recognized. 

 

Ben occupies a highly respected tenure in the Austin legal and lobby communities with a reputation for integrity, intelligence, tenacity, and fairness which have accorded him with an unusual longevity of positive relationships with elected officials.

 

Ben possesses an institutional knowledge of Texas legislative, regulatory, and public policy matters, especially regarding energy, geothermal energy, oil & gas, natural resources, water, tax, and environmental matters. Finally, Ben is a well-published legal author on the subjects of geothermal energy, produced water, oil and gas, natural resources, and Texas Legislation.

 

Current Business Activities

Ben manages a legal and governmental relations practice before the Texas Legislature and several state agencies in Austin. He and his firm are active in legislative and regulatory matters concerning all types of energy with an emphasis on geothermal, oil and gas, natural resources law, as well as the energy-water nexus, competing landowner rights, eminent domain, the environment, local government, taxes, and economic development. Among Mr. Sebree’s clients are several Fortune 100 companies, including clients in the upstream, mid-stream, and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry, geothermal energy clients, large land and mineral owners, produced water recycling clients, several leading trade associations, various elected officials, and other clients including his service as General Counsel for The Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance. 

 

Education/Honors/Appointments

Juris Doctorate | Law | University of Houston College of Law, Houston, Texas

Bachelor of Arts | University of Texas, Austin, Texas

 

Appointed by Governor Perry to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

Elected to the Governing Council of the Oil, Gas, and Energy Law Section of the State Bar of Texas

Mike Umbro

President & General Manager, Premier Resource Management, LLC

Mike Umbro is President and General Manager of Premier Resource Management (PRM), an independent oil and gas operator in Kern County, California, and the founder and CEO of Californians for Energy and Science (CA4ES). His work is built around a single conviction: that California's oil and gas industry can be saved, and that the technology to do it will lead to an energy renaissance in the state.

At PRM, Mike leads development of the world's first Geological Thermal Energy Storage (GeoTES) project, a demonstration at the Antelope Hills field that stores solar heat in a depleted reservoir and dispatches it back to the grid as firm, round-the-clock power. GeoTES converts mature oil fields into grid-scale energy assets, keeping California crude in production and Kern County working while delivering the dispatchable clean power the grid requires. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through both the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation and the Hydrocarbon and Geothermal Energy Office, and is being developed in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory.

Through CA4ES, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), Mike leads advocacy and research aimed at grounding California energy policy in data and engineering reality. He hosts the Unleash California podcast, convenes the annual Unleash California conference, has briefed senior Department of Energy leadership in Washington, D.C., and works regularly with California regulators and legislators.

Mike began his career structuring independent oil and gas ventures during the U.S. shale boom and is a principal at FieldView Capital. He is a frequent speaker on energy policy at universities and industry forums, including Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and USC. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Pepperdine University, a Master of Energy Business from the University of Tulsa, and a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. A San Diego native, he lives there with his family.

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