The new chief executive of Dallas-based Maverick Oil and Gas Inc. hopes to make market value of the Bulletin Board-listed company as he did with Dallas-based Remington Oil and Gas Corp., which was sold this summer to Houston-based Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc. for $1.4 billion.

Jim Watt's career in E&P had taken him from Amoco to Union Texas Petroleum Corp., Nerco Oil and Gas Corp. and Seagull Energy when he was brought into Remington's predecessor, Box Energy, in the late 1990s to turn the troubled company around, which included renaming it Remington (for the company's collection of the artist's work).

"Box Energy was a Dallas icon...It was a mess. It had one good asset I could work from," he told more than 300 attendees at the recent fifth annual A&D Strategies and Opportunities conference in Dallas, hosted by Hart Energy Publishing LP's Oil and Gas Investor and A&D Watch newsletter.

That one good asset was a prolific field in the Gulf of Mexico and a long-term gas-sales contract to Phillips Petroleum that was priced during a gas-price peak in the 1980s. "Eventually we sold the contract, providing the capital we needed," Watt said of one of his decisions after taking over Box Energy.

Box Energy had two stocks, and Watt consolidated these. Its market cap was some $60 million. Shares were trading at between $5 and $10 when he joined the company in 1997. During restructuring and while gas prices declined, the stock price fell before improving later.

Among his strategies, Watt defined Remington's niche-the Gulf of Mexico-and took the company into deepwater plays. He hired technical staff members and implemented a business model. In nine years, the company rose from $60 million of market cap to $1.4 billion. Shares were trading near $45 when the company was sold. "It is possible," he told attendees of turning a company around.

This summer, he was contacted by Maverick board members. "Senior management was deciding to pursue other interests," he was told, and he signed up for the new task, although he had meant to take time off. The Maverick opportunity is one "I couldn't resist," he said.

Maverick's assets include some in the Barnett Shale, which Watt says he will sell by year-end; the Fayetteville Shale, where it holds some 125,000 acres and which Watt wants to explore; and in Colorado at Whitewater, where he and team members are assessing potential.

In 2007, he aims to find new assets to bring into the Maverick fold to further define its strategy.

He warned audience members that he is no fool-proof explorationist. "I've drilled a dry hole in every basin in the U.S., and Canada, and California, Ireland, the North Sea and Vietnam."

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