Cody Campbell and John Sellers
Editor's note: This profile is part of Hart Energy's 50th anniversary Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers of the past 50 years and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
“Don’t confuse activity with results.”
That was the mantra of legendary football coach Mike Leach, when he led the team at Texas Tech University, where Cody Campbell and John Sellers played.
“Coach Leach wanted us be mindful that merely showing up for practice every day wouldn’t make us better and simply going through the motions wouldn’t win many football games,” Campbell told Hart Energy.
The same philosophy applies to the oil and gas industry, where just drilling and producing is not the same as being profitable.
Campbell and Sellers were friends in high school, and that partnership persevered through college and into industry where the two have formed a successful sequence of energy companies as co-founders and co-CEOs of Double Eagle Energy Holdings.
In May 2023, Double Eagle IV expanded its Permian Basin leasehold to about 40,000 acres. The focus of the partnership is on producing properties, while Tumbleweed IV, also founded by Campbell and Sellers, concentrates on royalty and mineral investment across the basin.
Keeping results in mind, Campbell said Double Eagle IV is not afraid to pay for higher quality properties.
“In the long run, that’s how you do the best, [get] the lowest break-evens, great ideas and best results,” Campbell said. “That’s what we're focused on… the areas that are most productive in both basins.”
Since forming Double Eagle in 2008, Campbell and Sellers have completed thousands of individual transactions encompassing more than 1 million acres and more than $6 billion in aggregate deal value. Through the various iterations the partners have been backed by some of the biggest names in energy investing.
Formation of their current companies with EnCap followed the sale in 2021 of Double Eagle III Midco 2, wholly owned by DoublePoint Energy, to Pioneer Natural Resources for about $6.4 billion. DoublePoint was backed by equity commitments from Apollo, Magnetar, Quantum Energy Partners and GSO Capital Partners. Apollo has backed Double Eagle since April 2013, and Magnetar first invested in the company in 2016.
Campbell is no stranger to the big time, having played professional football as an offensive lineman for the Indianapolis Colts in 2005 and 2006 after earning bachelor’s degree in finance and economics and a master’s in finance. His interest in business goes back to his childhood. His grandmother, a member of an investment club in Plainview, Texas, would give him small holdings in stocks for his birthday and Christmas. She would tell him about the companies and they would discuss investing.
Sellers played defensive end at Texas Tech, and then went into real estate. His father and grandfather were in the cattle business.
“There are a lot of parallels in their business and what we do in oil and gas,” he told Hart Energy.
“We buy and sell non-stop,” said Sellers. “Basically, we’re always making a deal. I learned from my dad and granddad the importance of relationships in deal making. They had been trading cattle with the same families for two generations or more. You want to be fair when you’re buying and fair when you’re selling. We’ve been able to do multiple transactions with the same buyers and sellers during the past seven years.”
-Gregory Morris