The following is a round-up of E&P start-ups in 2008, from the www.OilandGasInvestor.com database. Find your peers and former colleagues here, and how they’ve been financed.

-- Port Lavaca, Texas-based Coastal Plains Exploration LLC has been formed by King Tomlinson, Jim Gilstrap and John Foester to explore and exploit oil and gas reserves on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. Tomlinson is president; Gilstrap is vice president, land and business development; and Foester is vice president, geology.

The firm is primarily funded by management; the balance is funded by industry partners.

Each was previously with Neumin Production Co., Point Comfort, Texas, where they implemented a capital budget of $246 million, including approximately $20 million in production acquisitions. In a six-year period there, they added new proved reserves of some 111 billion cubic feet equivalent at a finding cost of $2.22 per thousand cubic feet equivalent.

--GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of GE, Fairfield, Conn., has formed a partnership with Addison, Texas-based TriTex Energy LLC to acquire proved oil and gas reserves in southeastern New Mexico for $31 million.

GE Energy Financial Services is investing $30 million as the 98% limited partner and TriTex Energy is investing the balance as the 2% general partner and operator. The new alliance, TriTex Energy A LP, plans to invest an additional $14 million to develop and produce proved reserves over the next two years.

--Houston-based, Gulf of Mexico-focused privately held Northstar Offshore Energy Partners LLC has been formed with an initial funding of $100 million of private equity from Natural Gas Partners IX LP and the management team.

Glynn Roberts is president. He was president of Northstar Exploration and Production Inc. and subsidiary Northstar GOM LLC. James P. (Jim) Ulm II, a former senior financial executive with Pogo Producing Co. and Newfield Exploration Co., has joined Northstar as chief financial officer and partner.

--Covington, La.-based Etroa Resources LLC has been formed by Cheryl Collarini and Kevin McVey with start-up funding from Los Angeles-based investment partnership PetroDevelopment Partners LP. Etroa will acquire and exploit oil and gas assets in the Gulf Coast region.

McVey is co-founder and has experience in technical and management positions in E&P with Texaco, Noble Energy Corp. and Woodside Petroleum. Collarini is co-founder and has engineering experience with Mobil Oil, reservoir engineering consulting with her own firm, Collarini Associates and taught petroleum economics for Mobil, ExxonMobil and others.

--Jensen Beach, Fla.-based holding company Techlabs Inc. has established an oil and gas subsidiary to acquire and exploit assets in the Appalachian basin.

--Calgary-based Bankers Petroleum Ltd. has spun off its U.S. operations into a new entity, BNK Petroleum Inc., which has assets in Oklahoma, the Black Warrior Basin, Texas and New York.

The BNK-US management includes Wolf Regener as president and chief executive, Juneyt Tirmandi as chief financial officer and Rick Pawluck as corporate secretary. Robert Cross, Ford Nicholson, Victor Redekop and Eric Brown will be on the board.

-- Plano, Texas-based Cisco Energy LLC has been formed by David Myers and Randy Click to focus on onshore conventional and unconventional E&P opportunities in the Permian Basin, Midcontinent, South Texas and Rockies. Myers is chief executive and responsible for engineering and operations; Click is president, and responsible for business development and land. Myers and Click were formerly with the management team at Grayhawk Energy Corp. and Cortez Oil & Gas.

--Pioneer Natural Resources Co., Dallas, formed MLP Pioneer Southwest Energy Partners LP with an IPO of 8.25 million units offered at approximately $20 each for a total raise of $165 million.

Pioneer Southwest owns producing properties in Spraberry Field in the Permian Basin of West Texas and will acquire producing properties in its area of operations, including onshore Texas and eight counties in southeastern New Mexico. The assets include 64% nonoperated working interest in approximately 1,100 producing wells.

Production as of Sept. 30, 2007 was 5,117 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Estimated proved reserves as of year-end 2007 were 32.1 million barrels equivalent. The properties have a reserve life of 15 years.

--Houston-based Riverbend Exploration and Production Co. has been formed by Rodney Kubicek and Randy Newcomer Jr. to acquire and exploit assets in Texas, the Midcontinent and the Rockies. Newcomer was with EnCap Investments LP. Kubicek was with Continental Land & Fur, Albrecht & Associates Inc., several private producers and Arco Oil & Gas.

--Privately owned, Dallas-based Trail Ridge Energy Partners LLC has been formed by Ron Wade and Chuck Cederberg with a $40-million equity commitment from Kayne Anderson Energy Funds and from company management to acquire and develop assets in the Midcontinent.

Wade is president and chief executive. He was vice president, engineering, with privately owned Houston-based Redman Energy, and previously was with Cordillera Energy Partners and Hunt Petroleum. Chuck Cederberg is chief financial officer. He was CFO of Redman Energy.

--Former senior managers of KCS Energy Corp. and Charlie Prioleau have formed Houston-based privately held Force 5 Energy LLC with a $100-million equity commitment from EnCap Investments LP affiliates and other minority investors. Force 5 will focus principally onshore South and East Texas and northern Louisiana.

Cliff Foss is president and chief executive. He was senior vice president and senior manager of KCS Energy, which merged with Petrohawk Energy Corp., and has experience with Cockrell Oil, Barrett Resources and other E&P companies.

Prioleau has been named executive vice president, finance, and chief financial officer. Wes VanNatta has been named executive vice president, engineering. Bruce Hamilton has been named executive vice president, land and legal. Jim Travillo has been named executive vice president, geology and geophysics.

--Privately held, Calgary-based Shelter Bay Energy Inc. has been formed with an undisclosed funding from New York-based private-equity firm Riverstone Holdings LLC, Kelso & Co., energy trust Crescent Point Energy Trust and private investment firms Goldman Sachs and Trafelet & Co.

Shelter Bay focuses on the Bakken light-oil play in southeastern Saskatchewan and will expand into the U.S. Bakken as well.

-- Prize Petroleum LLC has been formed by Quintana Energy Partners LP, an affiliate of energy-investment firm Quintana Capital Group LP, Houston, and Lafayette, La.-based oilfield-service company D-O-R Engineering Inc. to exploit assets in East Texas, northern Louisiana and Michigan.

D-O-R president Michael F. McKenzie and its management team will manage the properties.

--Croff Enterprises Inc., Denver, has formed privately held E&P-focused Croff Oil Co. Inc. to hold Croff’s oil and gas assets primarily in Utah.

--Dallas-basedSovereign Resources LLC has been formed by former Netherland, Sewell & Associates co-founder and chairman Fred Sewell to make acquisitions in the U.S. Don Blanchard has joined as geologist, and some former Netherland, Sewell employees also have joined the new firm.

--New York-based Orbit Acquisition Corp. has filed to IPO 25 million units at $10 each for a total raise of $250 million on the American Stock Exchange. Orbit is a blank-check company that plans to focus on the energy and power industry, including the energy services businesses and the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors.

Gabriel S. Nechamkin is chairman. He is a senior principal and head of trading for Satellite Asset Management LP. Garry N. Hubbard is chief executive and president. He is co-founder of Willow Bend Capital Management LLC and was senior vice president, development, construction and acquisition for Panda Energy International Inc. Jerry D. Thurmon is chief financial officer. He is a co-founder of Willow Bend and was CFO of Panda Energy.

--Calgary-based Canbriam Energy Inc. has been formed with an equity-financing commitment of up to US$300 million from company management, New York-based private-equity investment firm Warburg Pincus and Calgary-based private-equity investment firm ARC Financial Corp. Canbriam will explore and develop certain onshore regions of North America, concentrating on unconventional plays in Alberta and British Columbia before eventually targeting unconventional opportunities in the U.S. as well.

Paul Myers is president and chief executive. He was CEO of Esprit Energy Trust. Stephen Soules is chief financial officer. He was CFO of Esprit and Canadian Hunter. The company also has managers focusing on geology, geophysics and land and engineering.

--Houston-based E&P Dynamic Offshore Resources LLC has received a $450-million equity commitment from New York-based private-equity firm Riverstone Holdings and New York-based global private equity firm The Carlyle Group and the founders and management team have committed an additional $50 million for a total $500 million.

Dynamic will focus on producing properties in the Gulf of Mexico.

Matt McCarroll is co-founder and chief executive. He was president of Gulf of Mexico-focused E&P Maritech Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Tetra Technologies Inc., The Woodlands, Texas, and founded and sold Gulf Coast-focused Augusta Petroleum Partners. Mike Moreno is co-founder. He is founder, chairman and CEO of Lafayette, La.-based oilfield services company Moreno Group LLC, which also received and equity investment from Riverstone and Carlyle in 2007.

John Y. Jo is senior vice president. He was president and chief operating officer of Turnkey E&P Corp..

--Privately owned Denver-based Sagebrush Resources LLC has been formed was formed by Robert Armstrong, Jim Lohrenz and a group of private investors and received an equity commitment of $60 million from Kayne Anderson Energy Funds and a $72-million senior loan commitment from Union Bank of California NA.

Sagebrush will focus primarily in the northern Rockies of the U.S., primarily North Dakota.

Sagebrush. Armstrong is president and chief executive. He was with Stone Energy Corp. where he oversaw the identification of seven new resource-play concepts in the Rockies, leasing more than 750,000 gross acres with reserve potential exceeding 500 billion cubic feet of gas equivalent. Lohrenz is chief operating officer. He has experience in E&P in North America and Russia.

--Dallas-based privately held energy investment firm Texas Energy Holdings has launched Texas Energy Operations to maintain and operate fiscal oil properties. It currently operates more than 500 wells in two states with revenues greater than $1 million.

—Stephen Payne