March Luncheon Meeting

After spending years trying to figure out what direction my career path would take, a desire to solve complex problems and puzzles led me to west Texas. Bringing the drive of a construction powerhouse, and venturing from Texas Tech to the far mountains of Big Bend’s Sul Ross, I built a following by attending conferences, building up the Geology Club, and publishing research. All in the hope to attract employers. All was well, interest was garnered by several majors and supermajors! Everything was great…..then 2014 happened. All hope of getting my feet on the ground running came to a screeching halt. 

Trudging forward, and bouncing around from a micro independent with serious financial problems while completing a thesis, and retuning to west Texas to work wellsite geology, things were fairly stagnant and a little boring. I reluctantly decided to form an entity, with zero plan for it. Fast forward six months, I was signing the transfer paperwork on my first “producing” (it did at one point) oil lease. Having almost zero funding, a little ingenuity and elbow grease, brought about the beginning of a strange and unexpected journey. Learning the production side of the industry, and some engineering, coupled with sabotage, interesting characters, epic failure, and moderate success has been a true experience one can only have in the world of small oil. 

The hope to expand had always been at the forefront of my mind. Always searching the orphan well list, the oil well classifieds (they exist), and digging through deeds and old lease records for the next project. Bring the covid disaster, and worst drop in oil prices in all of history, the day before having my second load of oil hauled. Companies everywhere are bleeding cash left and right, and letting go of leases like hot potatoes that were immersed in magma.  A pair of leases for an awfully low price popped on the radar, begin round two! Pulling records, well logs, asking questions, searching for funding, etc. brought about the unimaginable, and the potential success unthought of even a month before. Due to the nature of this acquisition, most of the information about my new Permian Basin assets cannot be released just yet. I will say one thing though, ALWAYS run a GR-N-CCL before perforating you wells, you cannot afford to miss all of your stacked pay zones. 

So far this has been quite a ride, I hope my story can inspire those that have been brought down by the current events, or perhaps cheer you up with some of the craziness that comes with starting your own oil company with almost zero money.