The North American shale revolution is a success story. 

Shale in the United States has emerged as a low-cost new unconventional energy resource, positioning the country to become the world’s top oil and natural gas producer. Holding the world’s second-largest deposits of shale energy after Asia Pacific, the North American region will account for more than 70 percent of global tight oil and shale gas supplies in 2030, British Petroleum predicts in its World Energy Outlook 2030.

Growing interest in infrastructure investing coincided with the run-up to the global financial crisis in the years 2003 to 2008, and in the calamity that followed many investors learned lessons about the infrastructure asset class the hard way — through write-downs, broken deals, inflated prices, the list goes on. However difficult this experience was for many investors, it should be more than a bad memory.

Pick your analogy — you have to walk before you can run, the first inning of a nine-inning game or any other. Infrastructure investing is a new endeavor for many, but not for all. We hosted our first Institutional Investing in Infrastructure conference in 2006. I remember sitting next to an investor from a trade pension, and at the end of a day of panels and presentations, he expressed in exasperation what I also was feeling — that the information and data being delivered was overwhelming.