The guest speakers at the Friday night sponsors’ dinner for the Permian Basin Celebration, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of oil and gas in Southeast New Mexico, will be Alex Epstein and Hanson Yates.

Epstein, the keynote speaker, is a philosopher who graduated from Duke University. He has expertise in energy and recently authored the book “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less.”

Epstein is also a consultant for political offices on pro-energy messaging. In his speech on Friday, which will be based on “Fossil Futures,” Epstein is expected to advocate for using more fossil fuels like oil and natural gas in favor of renewable sources of …

Hanson Yates …energy, which he will argue have pitfalls like excessive costs and unreliability.

Yates is the president of Santo Petroleum, LLC, which is an oil and gas exploration and production company with offices in Artesia and Houston, Texas. He said that Southeast New Mexico should continue to be a supplier of oil and gas, which he said have had significant cultural and economic impacts on the region.

“Until humanity has developed reliable, low-cost alternative sources of energy, fossil fuels will be needed to maintain and grow the standards of living to which we have become accustomed,” Yates said. “So long as fossil fuels are key to quality of human life, Southeast New Mexico should be a key supplier of oil and gas.”

The Permian Basin Celebration will pay tribute to oil and gas’ impact on Southeast New Mexico, Yates said.

“The centennial is a time to acknowledge all that oil and gas have done for our region and state and to thank the many generations of oilfield workers, office and technical staff, business leaders and elected officials whose hard work, risk-taking and teamwork have made it possible,” Yates said.