Horizontal shales deep under the earth’s surface are important to an energy company’s balance sheet, but so is what happens above the grass line — especially if that grass is owned by an exclusive Texas country club. From lunch-time dealmaking to mergers devised over 18 holes, elite country clubs in energy’s heartland offer oil and gas executives a chance to brush elbows with other drilling bigwigs. That kind of access makes five-digit annual dues worth the cost — or at least that’s what the executives using these private clubs hope they can convince their shareholders. Even as the oil industry undergoes its deepest downturn in a generation, about one fifth of CEOs at energy companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were eligible to be reimbursed for club dues last year, the biggest share among all industries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “It’s a networking tool. When […]