T?rue wildcatters never retire, and they never give up hunting for that elusive, final elephant that will be the capstone of their career. Houston’s Gene Van Dyke is no exception. After successes in the U.S. and in the Dutch North Sea decades ago, for the past decade he has pursued wildcats offshore Africa, from Morocco to Namibia and Madagascar, and in the Black Sea offshore Ukraine, under the banner of privately held Vanco Energy Co.


Vanco’s E&P niche is to do the science and develop prospect leads, secure the concession or production-sharing agreement with a government, then bring in a major or two as partners to get a well drilled.


Last August, Vanco Ghana Ltd. and partner Lukoil Overseas Ghana Ltd. secured a deepwater drillship to test the first exploratory well on the Cape Three Points deepwater block offshore Ghana in the Tano Basin. The ship’s retrofit is done and the well, Dzata-1, is supposed to spud later this spring. Vanco holds 28.34% interest in the block. Lukoil holds 56.66% and the state oil company of Ghana has a 15% carried interest.


Van Dyke is used to getting his feet wet. In the summer of 1947, he worked for Kerr-McGee Corp. on the barge rig that drilled the very first well out of sight of land, offshore Morgan City, Louisiana. He was a mud engineer for about three months. The well was a discovery.


“I had no idea, of course, that I’d be involved in the offshore business like I am today,” he says.


After graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1950 with a degree in geological engineering, he worked for Kerr-McGee again for a short while, then moved to North Texas to work for a small independent. He lived in the YMCA in Wichita Falls that year. Today, however, he lives in the Houston mansion built by Walter Fondren, son of one of the founders of Humble Oil (now known as ExxonMobil).


Van Dyke went independent early in his career, in 1952. He used to hitchhike to Fort Worth and Dallas to put deals together. In the morning, he worked up the geology. After lunch, he’d be in the county courthouse researching title for the land involved. After dinner, he’d drive out to the country to negotiate leases with landowners and ranchers.


It’s a different story today. In 1958, he moved to Houston and through the 1960s, explored the Texas and Louisiana coasts. And at one time about five years ago, he had more acreage blocks offshore West Africa than any company—even more than the majors.


Between his trips to London and speech-making at industry events, such as in Cape Town, South Africa, Oil and Gas Investor visited with him at Houston-based Vanco’s headquarters, which is decorated with an noteworthy collection of African art, masks and mineral specimens.


Investor From time to time you’ve talked of going public. What are your thoughts on it these days?
Van Dyke We considered going public on the London AIM market but, in the end, I decided not to. I’m very independent and would prefer to run my own show. The problem is, sometimes we get into projects that are so big, they require a lot of money.


Investor Thus, your partnerships with majors.
Van Dyke Yes. I’ve always had a very good geology staff. We get out ahead of the majors and look for potential. If we like what we see, we put together leases with the governments, then bring in big oil companies to drill. On a much bigger scale, I’m doing the same thing today that I did in Texas and Louisiana in the 1950s and ’60s.


Investor When did you go to the North Sea?
Van Dyke 1973. We bought out Tenneco’s interests there. And since then I haven’t done anything in the U.S. We spent 15 years in Holland and discovered a few oil fields.

Investor Why Africa?
Van Dyke In the mid-1980s I became intrigued with deepwater exploration and FPSOs (floating production, storage and offloading vessels), but they said we couldn’t use them in the North Sea because of the harsh weather; they would bounce around too much. So I looked for a place with better weather. In 1996, I started looking at West Africa. The first block we got was off Gabon.


Investor And what happened?
Van Dyke In 1997, I had a sealed-bid auction on that acreage and Total made the best offer. I walked away with a lot of money that enabled me to get more leases off Africa, and hire more people. At the height, I had about 20 million acres, but I have relinquished a lot of that since then. In 2004, we drilled a wildcat off Morocco with CNOOC and India as partners, but it was dry. I drilled a well off Cote d’Ivoire and it was bone dry.


Investor Why do you like the Black Sea?
Van Dyke When Ukraine became independent I bought some good seismic that Western Geco shot there in 1991. There are a lot of big structures similar to the Caspian Sea. The deepwater portion of the Black Sea is the only basin in the world that hasn’t been drilled. It took 18 months to work with the ministries to get the license, then the government changed two months later. Now I have to renegotiate with the new prime minister. If we could just perform on the license we were awarded… .


Investor Do you get discouraged?
Van Dyke No. I haven’t found any major fields, but we are not playing little step-outs. We’re looking for 500-million-barrel-type fields. I’m looking for home runs. That’s what turns you on when you are an explorationist.

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