TL;DR
Leigh Haas of Mockingbird Land Services tells Peter and Wade how she moved from Mississippi politics, including running Gene Taylor's congressional campaign, into land work. Her second project was a 600 mile, five state natural gas pipeline with 200 land agents. She shares field stories she calls the Right of Way Chronicles, such as landowners who slept with a baby deer in their bed. Leigh launched Mockingbird on March 25th of last year and sees the next big wave in natural gas as a good time for newcomers.
Before a single piece of pipe goes into the ground, a largely invisible workforce must secure the legal right to cross it. On a recent episode of the Local Energy podcast, hosts Peter Brecht and Wade Spear sat down with Leigh Haas, CEO of Mockingbird Land Services, to pull back the curtain on pipeline land services — the high-stakes, relationship-driven work that makes energy infrastructure possible. Haas's path to founding her own firm is anything but conventional: she started in the halls of the Mississippi Capitol and ended up negotiating easements across five states.
The Invisible Industry of Land Acquisition
Ask most Americans what a landman does, and you'll get a blank stare. Ask an oil and gas professional, and you'll get a war story. Haas describes land services as an industry that operates almost entirely out of public view — until the Paramount series Landman gave it a cultural moment. Even then, she is quick to point out, the show's portrayal only scratches the surface of what the profession actually involves.
At its core, pipeline land services means securing the legal right to cross private property. That requires identifying landowners, researching deed records, negotiating easement terms, and in some cases navigating eminent domain proceedings. Every major pipeline, solar farm, wind project, and even road expansion depends on this work being done correctly before construction ever begins.
The profession demands a rare combination of skills: legal fluency, financial acumen, and the kind of interpersonal intelligence that can turn a skeptical landowner into a willing partner. Haas argues that the best land agents in pipeline land services are, in her words, "networking ninjas" — people who know which projects are about to kick off, which ones are shutting down, and who just got hired or fired across the basin.
Haas herself has addressed the question head-on in a widely shared LinkedIn post: "What the Hell Is a Land Service Company?" — a plain-language breakdown of what firms like Mockingbird actually do and why the industry exists.
Transferable Skills: From the Capitol to the Right of Way
Haas did not come up through the traditional oil and gas pipeline. She started as a legislative aide in the Mississippi House of Representatives, working directly in the chamber during session and watching how bills lived and died. She later ran a congressional campaign for a 22-year incumbent — before she was old enough to rent a car.
When the congressman lost his seat, Haas transitioned into land services. Most people in the industry, she notes, travel the opposite direction — from oil and gas into policy and politics. She went the other way. That reversal turned out to be an advantage. Her background in legislation gave her an unusually clear understanding of how regulatory frameworks are built and how they can be changed, knowledge that proved directly applicable to the permitting and compliance side of pipeline projects.
"I saw how bills died. So it's kind of weird. It's a combination that I know how regulatory works for oil and gas now because I came from that world."
The overlap between politics and land work runs deeper than it might appear. Both fields are built on relationships. Both require the ability to walk into a room, quickly read the dynamics, and identify the terms that allow a deal to move forward. Haas jokes that she has long planned to launch a subsidiary called "Landmen and Lobbyists," because she is convinced the skill sets are nearly identical.
The Secret Sauce of Pipeline Land Services
Early in her career, Haas was thrown into the deep end. Her second project in the industry was a 600-mile natural gas pipeline that required deploying 200 land agents across five states — and her company scaled from roughly 90 to 350 employees in a matter of weeks. There was no training manual. She learned by doing, negotiating pay rates and job scopes with seasoned professionals who had decades of experience she did not yet have.
That experience forged her management philosophy. The most important thing a land services manager can do, she argues, is understand the specific strengths of each agent. Some are acquisition specialists, skilled at negotiating directly with landowners. Others are title experts, most effective when they are buried in deed records at a county courthouse. Matching the right person to the right task is what separates a project that runs smoothly from one that stalls.
The land agents themselves, Haas insists, are the true intelligence network of the energy industry. They are the ones who know what is happening on the ground before it shows up in a press release. They know which landowners will negotiate and which ones will not. They know which projects are quietly being rerouted and which ones are about to break ground. Cultivating those relationships over years — and earning their trust — is the foundation on which Mockingbird Land Services is built.
"They are the secret sauce. They are the secret to everything. And they trust me, and I trust them. So it works out."
[Link to related internal post about energy infrastructure development and right-of-way management]
Stories from the Field: What Land Agents Actually Encounter
The work is not glamorous. Land agents routinely drive four or five hours one way to reach a single landowner, often arriving after dark, navigating roads that predate GPS. What they find when they knock on the door is not always what they expect.
Haas has been compiling these accounts into a collection she calls the "Right of Way Chronicles." The stories range from the memorable to the genuinely bizarre. Agents have encountered landowners who sleep with baby deer in their beds. Others have walked into homes where the owner kept primates as pets. One agent was chased off a property at gunpoint. These are not edge cases — they are a routine part of the job for anyone working in rural right-of-way acquisition.
The point is not just entertainment. These stories illustrate the fundamental challenge of pipeline land services: every landowner is different, every property situation is unique, and the only tool that reliably works across all of them is the ability to build a genuine human connection quickly. Wade Spear, a drilling operator and co-host of Local Energy, put it plainly: the landmen he follows on social media have the best stories in the industry, bar none.
Navigating the Next Big Wave in Natural Gas
The timing of Haas's decision to launch Mockingbird Land Services — in March 2024 — coincides with a significant inflection point in the U.S. energy sector. Natural gas production hit record levels in 2025, driven by surging LNG export demand and a wave of new pipeline construction targeting Gulf Coast terminals. The United States added approximately 6.3 billion cubic feet per day of new pipeline capacity in 2025 alone, the largest single-year expansion in nearly two decades.
That infrastructure buildout requires exactly the kind of pipeline land services work Mockingbird does. Every new pipeline mile means new easement negotiations, new title research, and new landowner relationships to manage. Haas sees this moment as a generational opportunity for people looking to enter the profession. Unlike solar projects, which may last seven months, major natural gas pipeline projects can run seven to ten years — providing the kind of stable, long-term engagement that allows newer professionals to genuinely learn the craft.
The skills required are also transferable across energy sectors. During the Biden administration, Haas's team pivoted to solar and wind projects, buying easements for solar farms and wind turbine corridors using the same techniques they had developed for natural gas pipelines. The underlying work does not change much. The property is different. The landowners are the same.
"It's all transferable. Instead of buying easements for natural gas pipeline, you're buying them for solar farms or wind turbines."
Haas also notes that mineral owners are not passive participants in this boom. The most sophisticated landowners are actively acquiring additional mineral rights, building multi-generational wealth through strategic accumulation. The ones who hold on — rather than selling — are often the ones who end up with the most leverage when the next wave of development arrives.
Final Thoughts
Leigh Haas's story is a reminder that the oil and gas industry rewards people who can build trust in difficult rooms. Her path — from legislative aide to congressional campaign manager to pipeline land services entrepreneur — is unconventional by design. The skills she developed in politics did not just transfer to this field; they gave her a competitive edge that most of her peers lack.
Mockingbird Land Services is one year old and already working with a network of experienced land professionals who followed Haas out of the corporate world to build something of their own. That kind of loyalty is not bought. It is earned over a decade of late-night phone calls, honest feedback, and showing up when it mattered. For anyone serious about pipeline land services, Mockingbird represents exactly the kind of firm the industry needs more of.
To hear the full conversation with Leigh Haas, including the complete Right of Way Chronicles and her advice for anyone looking to break into the land services profession, listen to this episode of the Local Energy podcast.
🎙 Listen to the full episode on YouTube or Spotify. Not financial advice. Do your own research.
Links
- Guest: Leigh Haas, Mockingbird Land Services
- Connect on LinkedIn: Leigh Haas
- Recommended Reading: Oil Scout in the Permian Basin
Transcript
Show the transcriptHide the transcript
Peter Brecht00:06
Wade, I am so excited to see you on camera today. It's been, I think like maybe a week, maybe two, long. What have you been up to? I've just been nothing but chasing kids lately, so.
Wade00:11
Think I skipped out last
Well, I was gonna say it's spring break week. So it's funny, like I'm the only one in town. So I'm working, I got a rig going and we're actually like running casing right now. So we hopefully we'll be pumping some meds tonight, put this thing to bed, get a few days off. But my wife and my oldest are taking like a senior trip deal down to Orlando with five of her friends and their moms. And then my youngest just left for a dance convention in Baltimore. My boy is down in New Orleans for a mission trip. So I'm like.
Peter Brecht00:28
On.
Wade00:44
I'm just hanging out.
Peter Brecht00:46
Man, I'm kind of jealous. So right now, I got a three year old, six year old, they're both, under the weather. It's beautiful out. It's it is. It's in the 90s in California, right? It's in the 90s. And it's March when we're recording this.
Wade00:50
Okay.
Okay? It's
Coming to Oklahoma. It's supposed to be 94, like tomorrow or the day after.
Peter Brecht01:02
Yeah,
It's beautiful. The beaches are great. I mean, I drove down to our office yesterday. I took the long route down the 101 just to like look. I mean, it is like it's perfect. It's like summer and summer is my favorite season for no other reason than just, it's good. But the mosquitoes are coming a little earlier than I like, but.
Wade01:15
Okay.
When my family leaves, get, there's like a mild state of depression that hits it because I'm so used to like doing baseball and lacrosse and like just always having all of these things to do. And I go home and the dogs are there and they, they're Amy's dogs. They miss her so bad. I like look at Chase and Chase looks at me and I'm like, all right, man, you're not helping me out here.
Peter Brecht01:34
Yeah.
Wade01:40
They're much less active. Follow her all around the house when she's home and with me, they're just kind of bored. Got to film in time.
Peter Brecht01:44
Yeah, that's all right.
It's good. Well, enjoy, enjoy the time you got. So our guest today, Leigh I need to introduce you. We have Leigh Haas from Mockingbird Land Resources, Land Services. Sorry, I'm already getting it wrong. But Leigh, I'm excited to talk with you today. We, I think the first time we talked, you were rushing to the airport. And you told me in like 30 seconds what you did for a living. I had no idea what any of it meant.
Leigh Haas01:54
You're providing.
It's okay. It's okay.
Yes, that's typical.
Peter Brecht02:10
We touched base again, I met you at NAEP in person, which was great. Along with a couple of your people that you work with, which has been fantastic to just kind of, get to know your circle a bit. But so yeah, excited to learn about about you and what you're doing, your background and all that. But the first question that we're going to start asking everyone that comes on the show is, did we actually land on the moon? That's the first question I'm gonna ask you.
Leigh Haas02:33
Yes, we did. I did. Said I did.
Peter Brecht02:35
We did. Okay. All right. All right. And
Wade02:35
I'm
Leigh Haas02:37
No, we did. Yeah.
Wade02:38
I'm firmly aligned with Leigh on this, yeah.
Peter Brecht02:39
Okay.
All right. Okay.
Wade02:41
Well.
Leigh Haas02:42
I
Definitely believe, yes, I think we definitely landed on the moon. I'm a Kennedy fan, I'm a Kennedy fan.
Wade02:45
Man, that was left
Peter Brecht02:46
All right, perfect. That's all we need to know. All right, next question.
Wade02:48
Field.
Peter Brecht02:49
Next question. Give me a little bit of background in your oil and gas world. Let's kick things off here.
Leigh Haas02:54
Yeah, so I started in politics, working for the house representatives in Mississippi and Jackson at the Capitol. And then I worked for a United States Congressman, and then wound up he lost and then I transferred or transitioned into land and oil and gas, which is kind of funny because most people I'm learning now it's usually the other way around. It's oil and gas and politics.
Wade03:18
Hmm.
Leigh Haas03:20
And everybody says I did it backwards. So I like started out in the gauntlet, in the lion's den with the politicians and then wound up in land services. Doing, I was hiring all of these land men and these right away agents to buy all of the leases and the land rights to build these major pipelines. I'd like to say I started a business in an invisible industry because until land man came out, nobody even knew what this.
Industry was, and even with Landman, it's still like, technically, if you want to get all, specific, it's not really that accurate to what the actual profession does. So outside of that show and its cultural references, nobody even knows what this is. I didn't know what it was when I started in it. I got trained in it for about 10 years. Learning that way.
Peter Brecht04:07
Gotcha. So when you started in politics, what were you doing there? What was your day to day?
Leigh Haas04:10
Well, so I was,
I was a legislative aid for the house of representatives. So, you know, the, he's down the governor of Mississippi. He was the lieutenant governor when I worked with them. So I've seen him, everybody like grow, grow up as, for lack of better term. So I was in the chamber every day during session, watching how bills got passed, watching how legislation gets moved throughout the, throughout the chambers, and throughout the chain, the levels,
Peter Brecht04:14
Okay. Okay.
Leigh Haas04:38
I saw how Bill died. So it's kind of weird. It's combination that I know how regulatory works for oil and gas now because I came from that world. Then I ran a congressional campaign for a 22 year United States congressman. So yeah, I ran a congressional campaign before I could legally rent a car.
Peter Brecht04:49
Gotcha.
Wow.
Wade04:55
That's amazing.
Wade05:01
That sounds
Like early 2000s oil field. It's like you're young and willing to take on responsibility. It's like, here you go, have it all, whatever you want.
Leigh Haas05:04
Yeah. Well,
Peter Brecht05:04
Yeah.
Leigh Haas05:09
He, called me, his name's, he was a Congressman, Gene Taylor. He called me he said, if you can move home from Jackson in four days, I'm running for Congress again, and I want you to run my campaign. So I packed my stuff in and I never looked back. And then he wound up, he got beat and he wound up shipping. Worked for a shipping and overseas shipping company in oil.
Wade05:24
Get out.
Peter Brecht05:25
That's awesome.
Leigh Haas05:32
So we laugh that, I went to work in land, building all these natural gas pipelines and he's shipping it overseas. So we laughed afterwards that we became enemies, like competitors, because we're shipping it overseas and I'm over here trying to get it out the ground.
Wade05:38
Right.
Peter Brecht05:44
Yeah, yeah.
Wade05:48
I had never really thought about that overlap between, I guess, politics and land work. But now that you mention it, just the land guys. Know how much relationship and, communication and all that stuff's required. I could see there's quite a bit of overlap there.
Leigh Haas05:53
Huh.
It's all the same.
Yeah,
I said that, when all this is successful, when it, when it's all said and done, I will have a subsidiary called land men and lobbyists. And because I said, I've seen some of these people, they go to someone's house, they talk them into selling them their property, and then they get invited back to the wedding, anniversaries and birthday parties. And I'm like, if they can do that with the most, you know,
Wade06:08
Right.
Leigh Haas06:27
Aggressive landowners, can only imagine what they can do with legislation during session. Think about it. Could, there's a tell them what they could talk to politicians into.
Wade06:29
Right.
Peter Brecht06:37
Well, they're both very relational, right? I think everything is. But yeah, it's all a lot of that and scrolling on x, right? The landmine are they're always dealing with something like they're going to the courthouse or whatever. What's that there's
Wade06:37
Yep.
Leigh Haas06:40
Mm-hmm. It's all transferable.
Wade06:42
Right.
Leigh Haas06:49
Uh-huh.
Wade06:50
They're the loudest
And most interesting follows, by far, is the land. The stories they have are just amazing.
Peter Brecht06:53
Yeah, they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leigh Haas06:53
Yeah.
Yeah, that's
Peter Brecht06:57
Yeah.
Leigh Haas06:58
The best part is that you people have no idea the stories you hear over the years.
Peter Brecht07:03
And, the other thing too, the stories that landmen tell are so relatable because especially like they'll tell you how people operate and how they think about mineral rights and all that stuff. And you're like, man, that is just people in general, but you're actually saying the quiet part out loud. And I love that, so, it's, good to understand the psychology behind it. So I started out in politics, and I guess a question I have on that is, obviously politics and oil and gas are super related, like you said, but, you know,
Leigh Haas07:16
Yeah.
Thank
Wade07:24
Okay.
Peter Brecht07:29
Did that teach you, I guess, the part of your job where you're going out and getting landmine to go get the rights and all that? Did you learn the workflow from doing that? Or did you need to go, I guess, work for another company to kind of learn how it all fit together?
Wade07:34
Okay.
Leigh Haas07:34
Okay.
Yeah. No, I had to, I went and worked for other companies and they had to teach me basically
Everything, that, I didn't know anything about this industry. Knew about pipelines, but I didn't know the whole, the intricacies of what happens before the pipe goes in the ground, you know? You know, so I had to learn and it really, so like my second project ever in the industry was a 600 mile, five state for regulated natural gas pipeline.
Wade07:58
Right.
Leigh Haas08:11
We put 200 land agents on across five States and you don't know, there's no training manual for that. Like I'm talking to, went from like 90 to 350 employees in a matter of a couple of weeks. There's yeah. And so here I am, here I am. Like I'm, fresh into this industry and I am literally negotiating pay rates and job, job scopes and locations.
Wade08:25
Dealing with that many personalities must just be a huge headache.
Leigh Haas08:40
With like these samurai negotiators, I didn't even realize it. So yeah, I've always been, obviously I started in politics because I came good with talking with people. Well, I wound up like for the next 10 years getting trained by like these negotiating, masters. So it kind of like just, it all, they taught me a lot more than, than I ever could have dripped. And they really, they teach you about relationships and then.
Wade08:43
Right.
But...
Leigh Haas09:09
They teach you how to listen, really, too. And you start to pick up things from the cues here and there that you didn't realize was even happening.
Peter Brecht09:16
Hmm. Wow, I didn't think about a negotiation part, I would feel I guess I need to know a little bit more about that. So let's start there. But like, what are you negotiating in these contracts? Obviously, there's a dollar amount somewhere that there's always something like that. But what are the other terms that that you would be looking at?
Wade09:16
Right.
Leigh Haas09:18
I'm just going to bed.
Subscribe!
So with the land agents, you're, so like during recruiting them, got to figure out what's their skillset, what they're really good at. You know, a lot of them, they're either acquisition, so they'd buy the easements and they purchased the negotiation for the actual property. Then there's the title agents that are, the ones that are really good know, researching the deeds and the land records. Some of them, they have to have patent of present experience.
Peter Brecht09:38
Yeah.
Leigh Haas10:04
And then some of them, they're in different sectors of the energy, industry. You really learn. What's, my skill, their skills gets skill, skill sets are, and, you, you learn how to call a bluff and you learn, sometimes people will want to take a job just because they want to take a job and they might not be that good at that particular skill set. It's, you, learn, you really become like a master bullshit caller.
Wade10:15
Mm-hmm.
Leigh Haas10:33
Really? Can I curse on you? Sorry.
Peter Brecht10:33
Yeah, yeah.
Wade10:34
Yep.
Peter Brecht10:36
I'd imagine so. And you're probably not meeting all these people in person, right? Out of those 350 employees, you're...
Wade10:37
God.
Leigh Haas10:42
No, no, because
You're doing it across multiple energy sectors in different states all over the country.
Peter Brecht10:47
Yeah.
Gotcha. So this was several years ago, I'm assuming, before zoom was really, as popular. Right now we're meeting on Riverside, we're doing a podcast on video recording, the whole thing, the technology is just so great now
Leigh Haas10:56
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Peter Brecht11:04
Zoom wasn't a thing. You're probably doing most of this over the phone, right? And so at least I assume so I how are you
Leigh Haas11:11
Yeah?
Peter Brecht11:12
I mean, those conversations, I know phone
Calls can be some of the most tense moments, right? I like meeting people in person because I don't think they can run away, I suppose. But like, if we got to talk about something over the phone, it's really easy to be a little more short. Maybe not your full personality is coming through. You can just hang up the phone. It is what it is. But highly effective. Like, learning to talk with people like that, I can tell like even when I was talking to you on the phone, you're very calm, very confident about it.
Leigh Haas11:21
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
Thank you.
Peter Brecht11:40
What are some of the challenges though of like, of, managing people over the phone? Cause we, the company I work for, we're fully remote. And that, that's kind of recent that since COVID. Doing it before, like how's that work in the oil field?
Leigh Haas11:55
Yeah. I think if practice for one, so, and a lot of times the land agents, it, would, it would take them four or five hours one way to get to a landowner's house. So they would be like, six, seven o'clock at night by themselves. This was, the GPS wasn't really even a thing still. So they were calling me. I was the one that they would talk to that would like keep them company while they were going to do these things. So it's just kind of, it kind of,
Wade (12:06).
Peter Brecht12:20
Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.
Leigh Haas12:24
I guess it's really just from experience through that kind of way. And that's when I would learn so much about them and their families, their regular lives, when they were looking for new work. And then they were the ones telling me like, well, so-and-so is about to build a pipeline here, or we're going to build a solar farm there. I have said this from the beginning, they are the secret sauce. They are the secret to everything. And they trust me, and I trust them. So it works out.
Peter Brecht12:27
Okay.
Leigh Haas12:53
I learn a lot from, I learn more from them than they could ever learn from me. I know that.
That some of their pain in the butt too, especially when they're looking for work, their jobs are, their projects about to come to an end. They're calling sometimes three or four times a week, just to see, Hey, you got something or X, Y, Z. And, I've told a couple of them, they're getting a little up there and they're wanting to retire. And I said, I'll be damn if y'all retire before I get to fire you at least once. I'm like, you have for 10 years, have, you have
Peter Brecht13:17
Yeah. Right.
Wade13:23
Yeah.
Peter Brecht13:26
That's funny.
Leigh Haas13:28
Blown my phone up and driven me crazy for work. Said, in here right now that I've started my own outfit, you better, I will kill you before I get to follow you at least once.
Wade13:39
I would imagine... Oh, go ahead.
Peter Brecht13:40
There's a great book.
There's a great book that I read picked it up from the there's a museum in Midland It's called an oil scout in the Permian Basin. It was written in the 60s and it's an old book and I love reading older books because The language in them is so much more dynamic. I feel than than what we're writing today, right? Like they just use words and like sentence structures that we don't get but One of the big takeaways I had was that the landmine
Leigh Haas13:49
Okay.
Yeah.
Peter Brecht14:07
Had their ear to the ground on everything. They like when Landman met up, it was like, that's where you wanted to be. That's the room. That's where you want to get coffee with everybody because you learn so much about the industry. They knew everybody. And I think obviously that's still continuing today.
Leigh Haas14:09
What?
Mm-hmm.
That's what I mean.
Yeah, like they know what projects are about to get shut down. Know which ones are about to kick off. They know who's been fired recently. They know who's, not doing their, it's, it is a networking. They are networking ninjas. Really are.
Peter Brecht14:24
Yeah.
That's cool. Well, if anyone needs a good read, that's one that I'd recommend. But Wade, I think I cut you off there. Just want to make sure I didn't ignore a question you had.
Leigh Haas14:37
Yeah.
Wade14:41
I mean, just on the technical side of things, one of the things that I always thought about with pipelines that would be a huge challenge is like, you kind of have this lay, right? Like where you expect the pipeline to go and you're negotiating kind of all along the way. But then all of a sudden, I would imagine there's some landowners where regardless of what you're willing to do or how good you are at selling and negotiating, they just say there's zero chance.
Like in that instance, I imagine you have to pivot. Have to, you go back and have to renegotiate with a lot of different people along that way.
Leigh Haas15:09
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because, anytime you see like there's a potential reroute or that's usually why there's some really bullheaded, which rightfully so in some instances, I can understand. Understand. So there's some instances where you have to do reroutes because landowners won't budge or then you've got to get into the eminent domain and the condemnation side of things. There's always challenges and
Wade15:16
You see?
Right.
Leigh Haas15:35
There's even instances where, and so the stories from the field, I have started compiling with the land agents and I've called it the right of way Chronicles. And it's all these fascinating stories that people don't think about or even know happen, so I've had, I had a couple of land agents. They met with some landowners who slept with a baby deer in their bed. Like a yes. Think about it. Like these are, they're going up to knocking on somebody's door to
Peter Brecht15:44
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Leigh Haas16:04
Talk to them about buying their land, they're getting property access and they learn that they're asleep with a baby, like Bambi in your bed. No, in the bed, in the bed. Think about it. Who would ever dream that would happen? Hello, I got some stories for you. Sorry. Then I had another who they, the woman was a gorilla-mater. She had actual primates in her home.
Peter Brecht16:13
Yeah, they just have a deer in the house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That seems normal.
Wade16:21
It's like a dog replacement.
Peter Brecht16:23
Yeah, right.
Leigh Haas16:34
So they're like, these are land agents that have to go into like, then the ones that like get chased off of a property with a sort of shotgun, like.
Peter Brecht16:37
Yeah. Yeah.
Wade16:37
Gotta be illegal. There's zero chance that's legal.
Well, okay.
Peter Brecht16:44
Yeah, see,
That's more normal to me. Like the shotgun sounds normal.
Wade16:46
That's more expected.
Leigh Haas16:47
But
So like, the prime mater learned that this wasn't a joke. Was a real thing.
Wade16:55
That's a crazy LinkedIn headline right there.
Peter Brecht16:54
That's terrifying.
Leigh Haas16:55
And that's just a couple of, a couple
Of big examples, but it's like, hear stuff all the craziest. It's like, never truly think about it. You're going to buy some, trying to get some property access, even if it's like survey permission. And this person's got a whole ass gorilla in her.
Peter Brecht17:03
Yeah, that's a...
Yeah. Yeah,
Wade17:15
Just
Peter Brecht17:15
Yeah, yeah.
Wade17:15
Goes to show you never know what's going on behind somebody's doors, right? Like... Ugh.
Leigh Haas17:17
Yeah, yeah. No, and that's what's so fascinating.
Peter Brecht17:18
Yeah, what was
That documentary? There's a Netflix documentary like the tiger something. I don't remember, but the guy had all the animals and yeah. Yeah, all right. Well, listen.
Leigh Haas17:24
Tiger King.
Wade17:25
It's the Tiger King. That's in Oklahoma, So exotic.
Like I got my picture like in high school. I got my picture taken with those tigers. And like at the time, nobody thought it was like anything crazy because we were the Norman High Tigers, right? And so like, what are you going to do as a senior? You're to go get your picture taken with the tigers. I mean, like you're hanging all over this tiger. And nobody thought at the time like, yeah, maybe this thing would eat us. But after watching that documentary, I was like, yeah, what were my parents thinking?
Leigh Haas17:31
Forgot about that.
My gosh.
Peter Brecht17:38
Yeah. Yeah.
Leigh Haas17:40
Yeah
Bye.
Yeah.
Wade17:54
Like taking us out to go do this. Tiger King, that's what it was.
Peter Brecht17:55
No kidding. But even then, mean look, I'm just surprised.
I still don't understand how no one caught on sooner. The guy's feeding tiger. How much meat do you have to go buy at Costco to feed your tiger?
Leigh Haas18:03
Yeah.
Wade18:06
Oh, no, hold
Leigh Haas18:06
Yeah.
Wade18:07
On. Hold on. No,
It's like a completely legit thing here. I'll tell you, like it's out in Tuttle, Oklahoma. Like the craziest headline that I saw. OK, so I was drilling. We had rigs going in Grady County, which is right by Tuttle. And in the late teens, maybe like 50, maybe it was like 18, 20, 16, 17, 18, somewhere around there, a tornado came through and they were actually like there was an alert that went out that was like a tornado hit. Think I can't remember what it was called.
Peter Brecht18:10
Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Leigh Haas18:28
Mm.
Rush.
Peter Brecht18:36
No.
Wade18:37
I can't remember the little zoo it was called. I mean, like there's tigers and all that stuff there. And they were like, one of the animals is unaccounted for. And it was like, beware if you go outside. It was like, my gosh, a tornado hit the little green closures. Yeah. And I was like, I literally texted my guys. It was like, hey, just want to make sure you guys saw that, there's a containment fence down and there might be, I don't, I can't remember if they said it was a tiger or whatever it was. And I was like,
Leigh Haas18:40
Yeah.
Peter Brecht18:41
My gosh.
Leigh Haas18:48
Like a panther on the loose or something?
Yeah. So think about that. That's one
Example. Then think about urine. You're in Appalachia in the middle of the mountains in West Virginia. And there's this like a baby deer sleeping in the middle of a bed. You don't think about, it's like the hotel and what you make. Yeah.
Peter Brecht19:11
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wade19:18
I saw some crazy stuff in West Virginia too.
Peter Brecht19:21
Yeah.
No doubt. Man. All right. So anyways, we've got some, funky pipelines going through cause we can't really, get all the rights and all that. But, so, but at the end of the day, like there's gotta be like a certain tolerance, right? Cause I mean, you can't have a zigzag pipeline. I mean, just be realistic. It's not good for the, it's not good for the flow either.
Wade19:24
Man, you're bringing back all kinds of memories. Yeah, all right, that's great.
Leigh Haas19:26
Yes.
Yeah, never, well, you can, you can. It's just not,
It's not very cost efficient, efficiently efficient, but you can't, sometimes you'd be surprised if the lengths they'll go to, get it to construction. I mean, you have to, sometimes you have to grow completely around just one landowner.
Peter Brecht19:48
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, man, crazy.
Yeah. Okay. Well, bring us up to speed on your current venture, which is Mockingbird. I know this is something that you're real excited about and you've been working on for quite some time. And having conversations with some great companies and meetings at NAEP. I mean, all these cool things you got. So tell us a little bit about that.
Leigh Haas20:08
Yes, so.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I started this about, let's see, is, at the end of, so I'm a year from about a year ago, March 25th of last year is when I actually launched. So I'm coming up on a year. It's been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but it's the most exciting and liberating thing, to, be your own boss. It's, kind of, I like to say I fire myself about 15 times a day, but
Peter Brecht20:32
Wow. Yeah.
Leigh Haas20:46
But my dog's my board of directors. But it's been, the, outpour of, support and just the feedback in the industry has been overwhelming, but amazing. You just, you get to a point where you want to just make your own, clear your own path. And, that's kind of what I'm doing. I had a lot of support from the land professionals that had built up this network with over the last decade.
And they were the ones that were basically like, why don't you start your own outfit? Go, go do your own thing. We're going to come work with you. And I'm like, y'all are crazy. And now, you I, you you, you, you have these experiences and you have this, you do these, have these accomplishments over your years and you realize like, okay, enough's enough. I'm going do it for myself and I'm going do it with the people that helped get me to this point. So that's where I am. Yeah.
Peter Brecht21:36
Yeah.
Wade21:37
That's all.
Peter Brecht21:38
And so right now
You are, you're actively looking for, projects that you can participate in and get those people to engage, those laments that come along with you. Okay.
Leigh Haas21:43
Huh.
Yes. Yes. So I tell them when people are
Like, what are you looking for? Who's your ideal clientele? I say, look, if you have to cross private property and you're building any kind of, any kind of energy project, any kind of, if it's road or, construction, these bridge expansions, you have to cross private property and you need land agents to do that. You need land man to do that.
Wade22:06
Mm-hmm.
Peter Brecht22:08
Gotcha.
And does that
Work for like, so obviously, if you're drilling a new well, you probably need, you probably need the same services I would imagine as doing a pipeline. Right. So it's, kind of fun. Okay. Okay.
Leigh Haas22:15
Yeah, because it's all transferable.
During the Biden administration, we started doing solar and wind and carbon capture. Nobody knew about renewables, but it's just these transferable skills. Instead of buying easements for natural gas pipeline, you're buying them for solar farms.
Peter Brecht22:26
There we go.
Wade22:30
Mm-hmm.
Leigh Haas22:43
Or wind turbines. It's really, it could be road, transportation, doesn't matter really.
Peter Brecht22:43
Care. So
Yeah. For so obviously this profession will go will continue right there's always going to be the need for landmen. For those that might be listening to this thing like hey, I want to get into the oil and gas industry. I'm in high school and college. There's a likely a chance that they've had some sort of I almost feel like landman like you grew up in the culture that has it like if you're in California, you're probably not thinking about it unless you're thinking Hollywood and then you want to go be on a TV show.
But in this case, you you've probably been around it, but what are some of the things that you would tell others to go do if they wanted to get into this as a career?
Leigh Haas23:21
Yeah. Yeah. So I would say right now is probably the opportune time for greener professionals or even ones that don't have experience to get involved because there's a big, this is, the next big wave in natural gas. And, what I try to tell people is so like, say a solar farm, you couldn't be on it for seven months. You, these natural gas pipelines can last seven to 10 years. So the age of, with remote work, shadowing the real big
The real experts has become more difficult. However, with this next big boom in energy, and especially in natural gas, there's an opportunity for people to start fresh and they can train while working under, with these major natural gas lines to meet, and in my opinion, cause there's not a lot of opportunity. And I think there's a lot, there's a few of us that are trying to figure out how to promote that, outside of paying an arm and a leg for some of it.
Wade23:54
Mm-hmm.
Peter Brecht24:09
Okay.
Leigh Haas24:21
So the way to really learn from the experts, I think, is this is the time to do it.
Peter Brecht24:27
Okay, good. Yeah, I would say that we're definitely moving into, I think, a more energy. Don't know, the energies needed more and more every day, it seems, a way and I talk about AI, I read something today, like $200 a compute on Claude is actually burning through, thousands of dollars worth of energy. Yeah, and I'm like, yeah, so it's, heavily subsidized, because they're going after growth, and they're going after, okay, what's our real valuation? It's in the, multi billions, it's
Leigh Haas24:28
Honestly, it's question.
Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, it's crazy.
Wade24:44
That's all the same, yeah.
Leigh Haas24:55
Mm-hmm.
Peter Brecht24:56
It's crazy but
Leigh Haas24:57
Yeah.
Peter Brecht24:57
So that need for energy is going to continue to kind of increase and obviously it doesn't seem like mineral owners you know they don't give up their they don't just sell their mineral rights you know they sit on them yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well yeah interesting with the it seems like there's
Leigh Haas25:07
No, no, that's why there's like 10 generations of wealth because they don't give them up very easily and they're buying more and more, the same ones are buying more and more.
Peter Brecht25:21
Mineral owners that are like trying to buy more. And then there's also ones like you said, that are out in middle of nowhere that have, a pet deer that are just kind of like happy with whatever income they get from it and they don't have to work. Or as much I don't know is that is that seem to be the case? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I we've got a small well up in Michigan. I don't even know what it is. My father in law has this thing in Michigan. And he's like, here, look, it's yours. I still don't have the paperwork for it. But I didn't get a check. And it was $4.20. I thought that was
Leigh Haas25:29
Yeah. Yeah. We call it real box money.
Oh yeah.
Peter Brecht25:50
Funny. Yeah, I know. 420. I yeah. Man, what am I gonna do with that money? Yeah. Yeah.
Leigh Haas25:50
Look at you. I mean, I've sent out, yeah, I've sent out checks like 400,000, so maybe just keep, keep holding onto it, Peter. You'll get there. You'll get, you'll get to that $425,000 a month check.
Wade25:53
You and Elon, yeah.
Peter Brecht26:01
Right,
You never know. That'd be a good one, man. Could you imagine? I can't. I really can't.
Leigh Haas26:08
Look, just hold it
Forever. We'll see.
Wade26:13
Diamond hands. Here you go, Pete.
Peter Brecht26:13
Love it.
Yep. I'm good at that if nothing else. So cool. Well,
Leigh Haas26:17
Yeah, when I got into this and I started sending
Out checks like that, I was just like, my, you had no idea what kind of money was involved.
Peter Brecht26:23
That is insane.
Yeah, we're talking numbers that I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking through that. Maybe as much as I should be. But yeah, we got to move it got to move the oil got to move the product. So we'll we will move to close here. But is there anything kind of lingering that you'd want to share? And then then we'll wrap it up.
Leigh Haas26:41
No, just, if anybody needs to, needs my services or needs any type of consulting in the, from the land side, or even
Wade26:49
Okay.
Leigh Haas26:50
If somebody's trying to find out how to get into the industry, we've got these networks and I'm trying to use it to help everyone in the process. So just reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn, trying to get involved in Twitter and all the other ones, like an older millennials. So it's still a work in progress, but I see the benefit and I'm working on it.
Peter Brecht26:59
Mm-hmm.
Leigh Haas27:10
Cause watching people like you, Peter are inspiring me to get better at it and really, try to network and use, use my skillsets to help everybody involved. So.
Wade27:15
Okay. Okay.
Peter Brecht27:22
Well, look, I can tell you this, if I can sort of understand what y'all are doing, other people that are commit full tilt to it and get into it for a living, you can pull it off. This is
Just me trying to absorb and talk to great people. So Leigh, thank you so much for coming on today. I'll have all your contact info in the show notes here. Wade, excited to catch up with you again. This has been fantastic and we'll see you all again next week. Thank you.
Leigh Haas27:39
Thank you all.
All right,
See you all later. Thank you so much, Bye.
Wade27:51
Thanks.
