Nabors Energy Transition Corp (NETC) has completed its upsized Initial Public Offering by selling 27,600,000 units at $10 apiece.
The SPAC or blank check company intends to acquire a company that is involved in energy transition such as alternative energy, energy storage, emissions reduction and carbon capture.
The sponsor of the SPAC is a company co-owned by Nabors Industries, a global leader in land-based drilling rigs and Tony Petrello, the current Chairman and CEO of Nabors.
In fact, all the management team of the SPAC are employed by Nabors including William Restrepo (CFO), Guillermo Sierra (VP – Energy Transition) and Siggi Meissner (President of Engineering and Technology).
The management team will not be paid a salary by the SPAC until it closes on a transaction. However, to me, it appears that there is plenty of scope for conflicts of interest. In the prospectus, NETC states that ‘potential conflicts with Nabors are naturally mitigated by the differing nature of the investments that Nabors would consider more suitable’.
In August, Nabors issued a press release that ‘it continues investment in energy transition with Quaise Inc’. It provided $12 million in financing to Quiase, a company developing millimeter wave drilling technology to access deep geothermal energy. That technology appears to be within the remit of the SPAC, even if the size isn’t.