Trends in E&P Banking?

Ask him to explain to you the difference between E&P and power utilities.

EDIT: If you need an intelligent question that doesn't reveal your ignorance, read up on what the Saudis are doing to oil prices at the moment and ask him how long low crude price would need to be sustained before pre-produciton fracking/shale gas projects start getting postponed or abandoned.

Ask him if any of his clients (assuming he's E&P and not power utilities) have started postponing projects to exploit shale gas opportunities due to the low crude price.

Walking into the discussion without knowing what's happened to oil prices (see Brent crude index) in the last 6 months and why would be admitting that you know fuck all about the E&P sectors biggest current issue.

If you've got your acronyms wrong and he's actually power utilities, ask him what longer term impact you think low crude price will have ie can the Saudis sustain low crude and will other OPEC members stand for that, particularly near-default Venezuela (or will the Chinese come to Venezuela's rescue?)? if low oil prices can be sustained, will that choke the viability of US shale gas? If so, what will happen to the gas prices that gas fired power plants in the US pay, hence the cost of energy in the US?

Bear in mind that the general rule of thumb is that low crude prices reduces the viability of NEW projects (ie projects currently NOT in production). Once an oil rig, shale gas plant etc is built and running, most of the costs have been paid and the marginal cost of keeping it running are low, while the costs of shutting it down and restarting later are high. So exploration and pre-production spending is MUCH MUCH more sensitiive to current oil prices than production spending (ie spending on wells that are already producing).

Tip: Higher energy prices is net/net bad for US economy and bad for US power utilities. Higher prices often means utilities margins get squeezed, as the consumer/retail market don't like paying higher prices and the independent systems operators (ISOs ie the guys who coordinate the power grids) are more sympathetic to power consumers than they are to power utilities.

EDIT EDIT: I was years into my career before I knew what E&P stood for. So, from my current perspective, it's a dumb question. And I was full of dumb questions which displayed my ignorance well into my career, let alone at undergrad level. Good for you lining up a chat with this guy. If you've misunderstood what E&P means (exploration and production of energy resources, mainly oil and gas), feel 3 seconds of embarrassment and get over it, never think of it again.

If the later responders are like me, they may come down on your hard for your ignorance because it reminds us how young, dumb and naive we all once were.