W.B. (Bill) Phillips
President
Mr. Phillips has over 40 years of industry experience in domestic and international upstream operations both onshore and offshore including land, acquisitions, divestures, production and international joint venture programs. While in college he worked offshore for Pennzoil Company and upon graduation began his career with Cities Service Company. For the past 28 years he has held management and executive management positions with notable companies such as Mesa, American Quasar, Maralo, Inc., The Wiser Oil Company, Camden Resources, Marsh Operating Company and Hunt Oil Company.
Bill received a Petroleum Land Management degree from The University of Texas at Austin in 1976 and currently serves on its Advisory Council in the McCombs School of Business and since 2003 serves on the UT Chancellor’s Council. He has served on various industry boards including the Marcellus Shale Coalition, local land organizations in Houston (HAPL) and Dallas (DAPL), and currently serves on the NAPE Operating Committee, the Dallas Wind Symphony board, and the forms sub-committee of AAPL standardizing A&D agreements. He was awarded the TIPRO Best Landman award in 2013 and is a frequent speaker to various industry trade organizations (AAPL, NALA, NADOA) as well as universities such as TCU and The University of Texas.
Michael Mazur
Chief Financial Officer
Michael recently served as the Executive Vice President at Bounty Minerals, an oil and gas mineral acquisition company. Prior to being a founding partner at Bounty Minerals, he served as the Manger of Finance at Encore Acquisition Company, a public oil and gas operating company. He received his BBA from Texas Christian University.
Greg Wilson
Managing Partner, Corporate Development
Greg received a BBA in Petroleum Land Management from The University of Texas at Austin in 1979. He has enjoyed a 40-year career in the industry as Vice President of Land with Marshall R. Young Oil Co., a Fort Worth based oil and gas E&P active in Texas, Mississippi and Colorado and as Senior Vice President of Land at Bounty Minerals, a mineral acquisition company focused in Appalachia and founded by legendary oilman, Jon Brumley. He is a member of AAPL, FWAPL and PBLA. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the University of Texas Longhorn Band Foundation as well as the Local Leadership Board for Search Ministries.
David Adams, PE
Managing Partner, Drilling and Completion
David has 45 years of varied onshore and offshore oil & gas experience worldwide in drilling and completion design and operations. He began his career with Pennzoil Company and ultimately held management positions with Transco Exploration, Baker Hughes, and Hunt Oil Company.
His has extensive management experience as an operator and contractor including start up technologies and state-of-the-art systems resulting in management of teams in the US, North Sea/Europe, Middle East, and Latin America. Such operations have included drilling, completions, and production systems from low pressure to HTHP including ultra-high H2S in excess of 30%. His most recent US experience has been with drilling, completion and operation of horizontal wells with lateral lengths of 10K to 15K and with modern slick water frac stimulations.
David received a BS in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975.
Ernie Grodi
Managing Partner, Geosciences
Ernie has over 32 years of geological/geophysical exploration and development experience in the oil and gas business. He started his career with Standard Oil/BP working deep water (+3000’) in the Gulf of Mexico. Later he moved to the OCS and ultimately to onshore Texas and Louisiana gulf coast with Union Pacific Resources where he developed and drilled dozens of successful prospects and conventional wells. He jumped into the unconventional world as an independent in 2005 where he helped put together 25,000+ acres in the Montana and North Dakota Bakken play where hundreds of wells have been drilled on the acreage. From there he has worked and drilled unconventional wells in the Marcellus of Pennsylvania, Eagle Ford, Wolfberry in Texas and the Wolfbone in New Mexico. He has worked in the DJ Basin in Colorado on the Niobrara play, Marble Falls in the Bend Arch and the San Andres on the Northwest Shelf of the Permian Basin while working with Bettis Boyle and Stovall. Ernie has drilled conventional and unconventional wells in the Permian, Williston, Appalachian, Anadarko, Fort Worth, Bend Arch, Gulf Coast, Gulf of Mexico Basins and Mid-Continent Regions.
Ernie has a BS in Geology from Ashland University, 1986 and a MS from Wright State University in Exploration Geophysics in 1988.
Denny Whinery
Managing Partner, Business Development
Denny has 48+ years of experience in the “Oil Patch”. He started his journey with Pan American Petroleum in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the research lab during the summers. Following a career in the Oklahoma Air National Guard between 1969 and 1975 Denny was hired by Cities Service Oil Company as a Landman and subsequently worked for several independent companies, notably Helmrich & Payne, Reading & Bates and Williford Energy. In early 90’s he joined Union Pacific in Fort Worth and completed the last 20 years of his career with Burnett Oil Company as Vice President of Business Development. Denny has worked virtually every basin in the U.S. including the deep Anadarko in early 70’s, Arkoma, Permian, Louisiana, E. Texas, TX & OK Panhandle, Colorado, Bakken, California, South Florida Sunnyland and the Marcellus/Utica.
Denny played baseball for Oral Roberts University and received a B.S degree in Business Administration. He later attended Tulsa University Law School. He also served on the board and was President of Tulsa Association of Petroleum Landmen.
Mark A. Jacoby
Managing Partner, Production
Mark has 45 years of Permian Basin experience working for majors Amoco and Tenneco; independents Texland Petroleum, Burnett Oil, Black River Operating, and Red Creek Energy. He has experience in drilling, production, water flood design and implementation, and held various management positions, including VP of Production and VP of New Ventures. Mark has drilled 800+ wells in Permian Basin, including Hzs, gas wells, and many water flood infill wells.
Mark was the first to use slick water frac in Yeso carbonates in SENM. He and John Ely co-authored SPE paper #146523 detailing the great success of this work.
Mark was an officer in local Fort Worth SPE chapter, served 23 years as an elder at The Hills Church, and is currently Co-Chairman of Livingstone International University in Uganda, Africa.
He graduated from Texas Tech University in 1975 with BS and MS in Industrial Engineering. At Amoco, he attended many petroleum engineering seminars, including an 18 month drilling training program.
Brett Bradford
Reservoir Engineering Manager
Mr. Bradford has 28 years of oil and gas operating experience, spanning multiple central US basins, focused strongly on production operations and asset management.
After earning his BS in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993, Mr. Bradford spent the first 15 years of his career developing his production engineering and asset management skills with Texaco, Burlington Resources, Samson Resources and United Oil and Minerals. Assignments with these companies gave Mr. Bradford wide ranging operations experience in the Texas Gulf Coast, Paradox, Permian, San Juan, Anadarko and East Texas basins.
The second half of Mr. Bradford’s career has been focused on the acquisition and operation of conventional, vertical assets for his own private operating companies as well as a three year stint with a private equity firm also focused on acquisitions and operations. Through these endeavors Mr. Braford has acquired and brought under management conventional oil and gas assets along Texas Gulf Coast, across the Permian Basin and Mid-Continent Region and in the Williston Basin of Montana and North Dakota.
Mr. Bradford resides in the Fort Worth metroplex with his wife and 6 children.
Dan Meyer
Advisor
Dan is a Managing Partner with Decima Energy, a company he co-founded to invest in conventional O&G assets. Prior to forming Decima, he spent seven years as an executive with Hunt Consolidated and served his final two years with Hunt as the CEO of ES Xplore. Dan held multiple board positions, including Motive Drilling, ES Xplore, Dallas Petroleum Group and TBank. Before joining Hunt, Dan was a partner with an investment firm that returned more than $1 billion in equity value to investors.
Dan played baseball and graduated with honors from Illinois State University with a BS in Business Finance.