Bryan Sheffield
Editor’s note: This profile is part of Hart Energy’s Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers and the Agents of Change in Energy (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
Bryan Sheffield is going to wildcat.
He tried to shake it in 2001, starting an investment banking career after completing an undergrad degree in finance at Southern Methodist University.
And he went somewhat as far away as possible from the Permian Basin, immediately taking a position in Sydney, Australia, with Credit Suisse First Boston.
From his lifelong experience, the oil and gas business was unabatingly heartbreaking.
In the first decade of his life, Sheffield’s late grandfather, Joe Parsley, ran a Midland Basin-focused oil company, Parker & Parsley, in the 1980s oil bust.
He was in pre-school and grade school as his father, Scott Sheffield, was trying to grow the company after Joe Parsley retired in 1984.
“These were very tough times and very depressing times. I remember huge layoffs. Some of them were my dad’s friends,” Bryan Sheffield said.
Oil was roughly $20/bbl for more than a decade—and that was if it was a good day, as hindsight showed in late 1998 and early 1999 when oil collapsed to as little as $11/bbl.
“It was very difficult watching my father and his friends in the business barely survive,” he recalled.
So, Australia or bust. Parker & Parsley had become Pioneer Natural Resources and bought a property Down Under in the 1990s. “My father brought us a couple of times while he was growing the asset there.”
Bryan Sheffield was anxious to return as soon as possible.
But meanwhile, this shale thing happened back home, beginning with the Barnett in the Fort Worth Basin and the Bakken in the Williston Basin.
In 2006, his oil and gas wildcatting genes awakened. He went to oil and gas school at Pioneer and in 2008 formed his own E&P, contract operating his grandfather’s legacy vertical wells and leasehold in the Midland Basin.
In 2014, Joe Parsley was interviewed by the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas, his alma mater. He said he had wanted Bryan to take over his Permian wells, but he “didn’t know much about the oil business.
“So Scott [Sheffield] hired him at Pioneer and let him work with the engineers for a few months, with the geologists for a few months, out in the field for a few months, in accounting—he worked in all the departments that make up an oil company.”
Bryan Sheffield leased around the contract operations, building his own position. By 2014, he took his Parsley Energy public and sold it in 2021 for $7.6 billion, including debt assumption.
Today, he’s found a way to merge his love of Australia with his oil and gas wildcatting atavism. He’s the largest shareholder in Tamboran Resources, a shale E&P operating in Australia’s Beetaloo Basin. The company had its U.S. IPO on the New York Stock Exchange this past summer.
With private funds he’s formed under his Formentera Partners, he’s producing proved developed producing reserves across the Lower 48, while also wildcatting in other funds, such as in the Pearsall Formation under the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.
It’s an example of where he sees new oil and gas potential going in the U.S. onshore: Smaller fields that are also more complicated.
He doesn’t expect large E&Ps will take the time. “They’re probably more for smaller independents to prove up. I think there’s a lot of money to be made in these smaller fields—these old vertical fields where the shale hasn’t been tested.”
Also, vintage shale plays could use refracs on their old-design wells. “You’re hearing a lot of about refracs here and there.
“There needs to be a better understanding of how it was completed before and how we should frac it now,” he said. “That’s another opportunity for more small independents.”
And older fields likely have downspacing potential.
“Typically, when commodity prices go up—let’s say oil above $100 and stable or gas above $4—you can go back into all these old fields and downspace and accelerate drilling programs.”
As for all new plays, even at a higher oil price, these are mostly under federal land or in unfriendly states.
“So, there are plays, but it’s just going to be less friendly for oil and gas operators. It seems like we’re all focused in more oil- and gas-friendly states. If there is a push to new plays, it will have to be in less friendly operating areas.”
And U.S.-focused E&Ps should begin to prepare to operate abroad.
“I truly think in 20 years the industry will go international. It’s going to be well before 20 years by the way—I think in five to seven years,” he said.
Both the long-only energy investors and hedge funds in New York and Boston “all think we’re going to run out of inventory in five to seven years.”
The U.S.-focused industry will pivot and international is “going to be the path of least resistance.”
With an energy-friendly government, Australia’s shale-gas resources is one new area. “Now, they do have a reputation of [more] regulation and [slow] permitting, but they are improving significantly,” Sheffield said.
“You can get things done in Australia.”
Argentina has oily unconventional resources in its Vaca Muerta play, but “you worry about nationalization. The president does not have control of the country to get things done.
“So, you worry about him getting kicked out and the country reverting to … nationalization again.”
In time, he added, Europe will be more open to oil and gas development (“as long as we’re good stewards to the environment”) because of the cost of energy there.
And there are tremendous resources in North Africa that have been tapped with vertical wells. “There’s shale everywhere in North Africa.”
There is also shale in China and Mexico, but “I have a hard time seeing us moving there. I see us developing in places like Australia, Argentina and North Africa versus China and Mexico.”
Sheffield is excited about new explorers entering the business who will be producing the oil and gas for the world in 30 years.
“There’s this whole new younger generation,” he said. “They’re all interested in getting into energy. We’re getting lots of resumes for internships.”
He confirmed, “I’m much more optimistic versus in the 1990s.”
—Nissa Darbonne, executive editor-at-large, Oil and Gas Investor