Tom Ward announces new energy partnership
Tom L. Ward, a longtime player on Oklahoma's oil and gas scene, announced Thursday his year-old company, Mach Resources LLC, has formed a partnership with Houston-based Bayou City Energy.
The partnership, BCEMach LLC, will focus on acquiring, exploring and developing oil and natural gas assets across Oklahoma and Kansas, according to a news release.
“In our search for an equity partner, we were impressed with Bayou City’s investment approach and management team,” Ward stated in the release.
"Their previous track record in Oklahoma and outlook on future opportunities aligns well with our strategy at Mach," Ward said. "We look forward to working with BCE in actively pursuing assets that meet our common objective.”
Bayou City Energy also is a relatively young company, created in 2015, that focuses its investments on producing properties that have strong cash flow generation and drilling inventories. It is led by Will McMullen, its founding partner, and Mark Stoner, a partner in the firm.
Its website says it provides capital to partnering oil and natural gas producers by creating a platform company, which its general counsel confirmed Thursday is the case with BCE-Mach
LLC, or by entering into drilling partnerships with oil and gas firms.
Bayou City Energy has drilling partnerships with Houston-based Alta Mesa Resources and Oklahoma City-based Chaparral Energy. Each of those deals involve drilling programs in Oklahoma’s STACK play in west-central and northwest Oklahoma.
“We’re pleased to partner with Tom and his exceptional management team at Mach to pursue this exciting strategy,” McMullen stated as part of the release.
“It is our intent for this platform to be aggressive in consolidating and redeveloping select undercapitalized regions of the upstream sector and we look forward to executing this strategy with the Mach team,” he stated.
The Bayou City Energy website said it invests between $5 million and $50 million in its platform companies and in its drilling partnerships, although drilling partnership investments can be larger in cases where co-investment is involved.
Thursday’s release did not disclose how much money Bayou City Energy invested with Mach Resources to create BCEMach LLC.
According to the release, Mach Resources prefers to target low-risk, conventional assets that are low cost and have high returns.
An email sent Thursday to Mach Resources’ contact, Greg Dewey, asking for information about its current lease holdings and average daily production wasn’t answered.
Ward created Mach Resources last year after leaving Tapstone Energy, which he founded in 2013 after being forced out of his leadership position by activist investors at SandRidge Energy the same year.
Ward created SandRidge in 2006 by acquiring a controlling interest in Riata Energy for $500 million and moving it to Oklahoma City.
Before that, he served as Chesapeake Energy’s president and chief operating officer after cofounding that company with Aubrey McClendon in 1989.