Panel members at Mergermarket’s Houston conference earlier this month offered their perspectives about finance as it applies to oil and gas exploration. They talked about the upstream and midstream financing, private equity, investment strategies and business practices.

Here’s a sampling of the comments:

Alfonso Leon, vice president of Planning and Strategy for Apache Corp.:  “Some people need to realize that this is a very volatile business. There have been some success stories, but we just came off of 2008. … “A cautious approach to a balance sheet goes a long ...