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Art Gelber's Story

Arthur Gelber is the founder and President of Gelber & Associates, an energy consulting and advisory firm. Founded as a spin-off of Gelber Group in 1997, Gelber & Associates continues to work helping clients "do a better job" in the energy markets by employing tested and proven proprietary energy solutions in the natural gas and electric power markets - focusing on price risk management, price forecasting, transactional structuring, corporate governance, trading investigations, litigation support and management consulting.

Gelber's background and experience allows the Company to have a wide range of expertise. He has a bachelor's degree in Geology from Colorado College. During his undergraduate years, Gelber worked for Mitchell Energy performing oil and gas prospecting in the Utah Overthrust Belt and he worked for an independent geologist during his travels to Australia and New Zealand in 1981/82. Gelber entered Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1983 where he earned his Masters Degree in Structural Geology and Seismic Stratigraphy in 1985. Gelber co-authored two publications during his Rice years entitled "Structure and Stratigraphy and the Mystery Ridge Sequence, Central Nevada" and "Structural Geology of the Loveless Allocthon, North Central Nevada". During his time at Rice, Gelber worked for the old Gulf Oil Company. Upon graduation from Rice in 1985, Gelber was one of four scientists recruited nationwide by Conoco Inc.

At Conoco, Gelber generated prospects in South Texas using traditional seismic and well log techniques combined with multi-attribute seismic technology, 3-D seismic technology and amplitude vs. off-set analysis (AVO). Transferred to Corpus Christi in 1986, Gelber did well site geology and logging runs as well as reservoir engineering and reserve economics on a field in southwest Texas.

In 1987, Gelber transferred to Conoco's international crude oil trading group. Gelber was a junior trader and portfolio manager for Conoco's transactional businesses in the Middle East, Far East, Europe and US Gulf Coast international activities. Finally, in 1988, Gelber was given the opportunity to work in Conoco's crude oil and oil products pipeline operations in Ponca City doing primarily financial analysis of the business unit.

Gelber left Conoco in 1990 to begin an energy division for Gelber Group Inc., a commodity trading firm run by his older brothers, Frank and Brian Gelber. Brian Gelber is best known for his ground-breaking efforts in the global interest rate and foreign exchange markets and is recognized in the best selling book by Jack Schwager entitled Market Wizards. With the backing, training, and support of Brian and Frank, Gelber's energy division found success in providing customer services in the merging and commoditizing natural gas market. On the first day of trading of the natural gas futures contract, Gelber's Houston-based energy division of Gelber Group executed 10% of the total contracts which traded on the NYMEX natural gas futures ring. As the natural gas futures market grew from 100 contracts to over 50,000 contracts per day, Gelber's daily futures brokerage volume grew as well averaging about 5,000 contracts per day with clients representing industrial end users, natural gas producers, energy trading companies and speculators.

Beginning in 1992 with Bethlehem Steel and Pennzoil, clients requested physical natural gas commitments based off the NYMEX futures contract pricing, hence the beginning of what had widely become known as the "trigger deal". Transactions of this type grew for Gelber and in 1993 Gelber's natural gas trading company was named GGREnergy trading, where Gelber was the Managing Partner and head trader. GGR traded up to 1 Bcf per day. The business was sold in the late 90's.

After the sale of GGR Energy, Gelber's consulting and advisory business flourished. Large to medium sized industrial manufacturing firms as well as municipal and investor owned utilities turned to Gelber to provide expertise and objective analysis of market opportunities. Many of Gelber's previous competitors had become energy trading companies and overlooked the customer services Gelber's business demands. In this environment, Gelber's commodity market and procurement expertise helped save clients millions of dollars are eventually gave way to Gelber & Associates' Least Cost Purchasing Practices^tm (LCPP), Price Stabilization Protocol^tm (PSP) and Asset Management Practices^tm (AMP).

With the demise of Enron, followed by the enactment of legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, combined with Gelber's prior experience with trading investigations, Gelber has been recognized as an industry leader by many media organizations including CNN, Forbes Magazine, Time Magazine, Business Week Magazine, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Rocky Mountain News, The Economist Magazine, Williams Energy New Live, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Post, Charlotte Business Journal, the Houston Business Journal and the Chicago Tribune.

With Gelber & Associates, Gelber has taken his expertise delivers to clients the skills he has developed in energy trading, energy production, energy markets and energy corporate governance. Gelber & Associates offers its clients expertise and energy solutions through its suit of products and services.

Gelber was the original creator of the very successful "Conoco Rodeo Run", a 10K running race that is the first event of Houston's Livestock Show and Rodeo. As the president of Conoco's Running Club, Gelber and a few of his colleagues brought the idea of the Rodeo Run to Conoco’s senior management including Colin Lee and Dino Nicandros, and spawned the beginning of what has become Houston largest single running race, having raised millions of dollars for charity. The race has over 5,000 runners and 1,000 volunteers. Gelber was raised in upstate New York and has eight brothers.

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