Toby Shute of The Motley Fool recently interviewed Ken Peak, the CEO of Tarpon Folio holding Contango Oil & Gas (AMEX:MCF). You can read the whole interview here. Here’s one exchange:

Toby Shute: Ken, can you outline your operating philosophy at Contango, and describe how your current operations reflect that philosophy?

Ken Peak: I got a Ph.D. in the risks of too much leverage … in my 26-year career prior to starting Contango in 1999. Three guiding principles from the lessons I’ve learned are: Only low-cost producers survive and prosper in a commodity business. Secondly, reserves and geophysical talent are log-normally distributed, but [Vilfredo] Pareto had it wrong. It’s the rule of 95/5 not 80/20. Thirdly, “incentives drive behavior” is a fundamental principle of life, and thus everyone associated with Contango must have incentives aligned with our owners.

It’s a great intro to Ken’s philosophies about a lot of things, some of which may look familiar to attendees of a certain annual meeting in the Keys.