Driller wants to begin new path after oil slump
THE oil bust was rough for private Houston driller EnerVest. The company’s CEO, John Walker, recalls being unable to sleep the night before EnerVest cut 200 jobs in February 2016, when U.S. crude sank to the lowest price in a dozen years. It was the company’s second round of layoffs in just two years.
“It was the worst day of my career,” Walker said in a recent interview.
EnerVest, founded in 1992, is among the largest U.S. oil companies with 35,000 wells, 6.5 million acres under lease and $7 billion in assets under management. The company came in as the sixthlargest private company in this year’s Chronicle 100 with $1.6 billion in revenue in 2017, up by $300 million from the previous year. It employed 1,200 workers last year, with 350 in Houston.
The company recently turned to Houston energy private equity firm Mountain Capital Management to recapitalize its troubled 12th fund. EV Energy Partners, an Ener Vest operated firm, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.
It sold off thousands of acres for $2.7 billion in March. And it put in $85 million to stabilize its 13th Fund.
EnerVest will continue to acquire and operate oil and gas holdings, and take advantage of opportunities as large public companies shed assets to trim costs. It still has money to spend from its $3.8 billion 14th fund raised in November 2015. With oil prices around $65 a barrel, Walker is hopeful that several EnerVest properties will increase returns
“We had an opportunity during the bad times to make some really good acquisitions,” Walker said.
In 2015, for example, EnerVest acquired natural gas assets in the Nora field in Virginia, where it receives 100 percent of royalties on 220,000 acres, about one-third of its total holdings there.
“I would argue it’s the most profitable conventional gas field in the United States,” Walker said.