A friendship forged at NAPE led to a business opportunity for Jarred Kubat this past fall when he joined a startup as land manager. With a management team led by Jack
Wold, Denver-based Wold Energy Partners LLC is building a position in the Powder River Basin’s horizontal Cretaceous sands plays.

A native Oklahoman, Kubat grew up in the small town of Okeene, where ranching, farming and oil and gas provide livelihoods. His parents were both entrepreneurs-—his father worked in oil and gas ventures and real estate while his mother, an accountant, owned a grocery store. Kubat learned the value of hard work as a roustabout in the summers during his high school years and as a field operator for a midstream company through college at Oklahoma State and into his first semester at the University of Tulsa College of Law.

Kubat distinguished himself in law school. He was on the Energy Law Journal and the honor roll, was a Chesapeake (Energy Corp.) Scholar, and was recognized for achieving the highest score on the oil and gas law exam.

After graduation from law school, he joined Encana USA in Denver, rotating through different asset teams. His last years at the company were spent in its New Ventures group. He helped evaluate and develop entry positions in Michigan’s Utica and Collingwood shales and in the San Juan Basin’s Gallup play, among others.

Kubat is an owner and investor at Wold Energy Partners, which is backed by management and institutional equity capital.

Investor: What did you benefit most from at Encana?

Kubat: I really enjoyed my time there. The company was extremely effective in the years from 2005 to 2008 in attracting first-class talent. I was fortunate to be able to model and shape the first years of my career in that environment. Also, the company was very involved in joint ventures and I had the opportunity to interface with those partners, working on deals, advising asset teams and working on contracts and financing.

Investor: Why focus on the Powder River Basin?

Kubat: We wanted a basin with the potential for stacked pay, legacy production and one in the early in- nings. In the Rockies, the Powder River Basin made the most sense. The Bakken has been an incredible play, particularly for early entrants. We think the Powder River is in the second inning and can offer that kind of financial upside.

Additionally, the Wold family is a legacy Wyoming family with personal and professional relationships in the basin, spanning operations over 60 years.

Investor: What’s your directive?

Kubat: We’re putting together an operated position. Over the past six months, we tiered out areas within the basin to focus on the overpressured Frontier and Shan- non development. We also have exposure to a subset of additional plays through the legacy Wold assets.

Investor: What is your role?

Kubat: My main role is to evaluate competitors’ activity, look for acquisition targets, draft and put together proposals and see them through the purchase and sell agreement, due diligence and closing.

We’ve put together 40,000 acres in the heart of several leading sand targets at very competitive prices. It is blocky, contiguous acreage, which speaks to the work put in over the past few months. We recently closed seven acquisitions in one week. It’s been a lot of boots on the ground, grinding it out through our
brokers and basin relationships.

We’re focused on acquiring held- by-production acreage and legacy pro- duction—it brings in revenue and gives us time to evaluate where we want to drill.

Barrett Resources is marketing its Powder River position; Fidelity just picked up 23,700 acres for $183 million on top of where we are. It’s very competitive right now in the basin, it is really heating up.

Investor: What are the drilling targets?

Kubat: Stacked-pay potential in the three Frontier benches, Shannon, Sussex, and possibly the Niobrara. There is also existing Muddy production and deeper gassy horizons that need to be tested.

We plan to drill our first well this summer and have the permitting pipeline loaded moving into a full-scale drilling program in 2015. We’re also participating with SM, Anadarko, Peak, Samson and others as a nonoperator.

Investor: How much do wells cost?

Kubat: We see AFEs coming in at $16 to $17 million, sometimes more, but there is a line of sight to well costs significantly below those numbers—it speaks to the inning we’re in. We think learning could move AFEs down to $11 to $12 million in short order. SM is drilling 10 Frontier wells this year and Helis Oil & Gas is very active, so there’s a lot of learning going on.

Investor: What kind of EURs are you seeing?

Kubat: It varies, but SM’s published type curve is more than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent on 1,280-acre spacing.

Investor: What’s driving your success?

Kubat: Two things—devotion to hard work and willingness to tackle problems that others won’t. We have a saying: We want to be consistently green and growing, not ripe or rotten. There is no low-hanging fruit-—it takes being creative and flexible to get deals done.