Chan: "How would a sociopath fleece investors in oil and gas?"

Answer: inflating reserve valuations. He has a concept called "promotion-friendly properties;" those where it takes longer for the rubber to meet the road:

"One idea is to sell flawed properties to investors who don’t understand the flaws. As far as I can tell, there aren’t too many flawed properties in the oil and gas world compared to mining. Oil and gas assets in Egypt, Argentina, etc. are flawed due to the political risk. Other reserves are stranded in areas without the right infrastructure to properly process or transport/export the hydrocarbons.

Another idea is to take on oil and gas projects which won’t have cash flow until years later. Deepwater E&P has lengthy timelines and resembles mining in some ways. The projects have high risk and can take several years before they come into production. A stock promoter can sell inflated promises about the future. It will take years before investors realize that these projections about the future were overly optimistic."