As he sipped his gourmet coffee in a boutique cafe, Grant Sirgo, the president of Midland's Young Professionals in Energy chapter, disclosed his opinions surrounding energy development in America. Sirgo is the business development manager at Admiral Permian Resources, an exploration and production company focused on the acquisition and development of oil and gas properties in the Permian Basin. He isn't antinuclear, antirenewables, or even arrogant enough to believe that oil and gas is the be-all and end-all solution. He wants the best solution for humanity. We discussed renewables and how their weather dependency and unreliability made them a difficult (read: expensive and damaging) solution for society. We discussed climate change and how we'll need to move beyond lighting things on fire if we want to evolve as a society. We talked about nuclear power. As industry professionals, both of us eat, sleep, and breathe the electrical dynamics and eccentric dramas of the energy industry. Prior to meeting him, I suspected Grant might represent the nuclear industry's vision of Big Oil: a voracious tycoon who would expound on the deficiencies of the nuclear industry, demand that plants be shut down, and veto any promotion of the technology. After all, we were chatting in the monolithic mecca of America's petroleum generating machine (aka, Midland, Texas). Much to my surprise, he expressed support for nuclear power as a tremendously powerful solution to the world's energy needs. More than anything, he is pro-market competition and thinks that if you can build a better mousetrap, go for it. I responded that small modular reactors, microreactors, and the eventual loosening of regulatory requirements might very well be those mousetraps.
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