Matthew Palmer

NAPE Summit combines an energy prospect and property expo with a business conference and expo hubs covering oil and gas, critical minerals, renewable energy, offshore activity, minerals and non-operating interests, data centers, and bitcoin mining. The Critical Minerals Hub addresses exploration, extraction, processing, and regulatory, market, and supply-chain factors; other hubs cover energy and digital infrastructure, data-center power demands, and offshore regulation, technology, and leasing. The Energy Business Conference has business and technical tracks. Its agenda covers U.S. and global energy-market outlooks; grid capacity and AI-driven electricity demand; AI adoption, scaling, and governance in energy; and how conflict, trade disputes, cyber threats, supply-chain disruptions, strategic minerals, and energy security affect markets and investment. Technical sessions address AI in subsurface workflows—including geospatial tools, OSDU and harmonized datasets, and seismic analysis—and emerging opportunities in mature basins, including direct lithium extraction from Arkansas’s Smackover Formation, geothermal co-production in the Bakken, helium and hydrogen resources, and horizontal development. The expo also features prospect presentations and a government affairs session.

The forum brings together government, industry, and academia to address regional challenges and advance mission effectiveness and warfighter readiness. The program focuses on cyber, data, Super Intelligence, space, influence, and human performance, including resilient and interoperable architectures, the PACOM Mission Network, zero-trust architectures, SI-enabled decision support, information sharing, and joint and coalition missions. Sessions address MARFORPAC’s pathways for transitioning commercial innovation into operational capabilities; human interoperability and workforce readiness; cyber workforce modernization; AI and resilient communications at the tactical edge; operational technology security; data-centricity and mission-data resilience; defense acquisition and small-business engagement; and data fusion across command and control, cyber, spectrum, and logistics. The program also includes a Super Intelligence challenge evaluating decision-support, targeting, and planning tools against joint warfighting functions.