After Steve Antry, Michael O'Kelley and Ben Kemendo sold Tulsa-based Eagle Energy Co. to Midstates Petroleum Co. in the fall of 2012 for $650 million, talks began with their financial sponsor, Riverstone Capital, about their next venture. They came up with a bet on the future: Eagle Energy Exploration (Eagle II), staffed by six vice presidents ranging in age from 28 to 35. The first hired was Carl Vandervoort, who heads up geology. The ultimate goal is to have the youthful VPs take the reins of Eagle Energy III.

Vandervoort is a second-generation oil finder from Fort Worth, Texas. His father founded and ran Vorrt Exploration Co. (the company's name was filed wrong and never corrected) until his death around the time of Vandervoort's graduation from college. Carl returned home to transition the company's focus from operated assets to a nonoperated royalty trust. His mother, an oil and gas attorney, today oversees Vortt's nonoperated interests.

While overseeing the property-by-property sale of his family's assets, Vandervoort took courses for a geology minor. The Barnett shale play was taking off and it was an interesting time in the Patch. He moved to Tulsa and entered the master's program in geology at the University of Oklahoma.

He took a job with Orion Exploration, a private E&P drilling horizontally in the Hunton Lime dewatering play and generating prospects in the Mississippi Lime. After several years he joined Angus Natural Resources, an NGP portfolio company, as head geologist, again targeting Mississippi Lime. This past August, Antry and O'Kelley contacted him about Eagle Energy II, which Riverstone has funded with a $300-million commitment. At press time, the team was looking to make its first acquisition.

Recently, Vandervoort, who is married to a doctor and is the father of two young daughters, discussed his career path.

Investor What did you put together at Orion?

Vandervoort When I arrived, Orion was actively developing the Hunton dewatering play in central Oklahoma. The majority of my effort was focused on generating some 75,000 acres in prospects in the emerging Mississippi Lime play. We needed to find an equity partner to properly develop the play. I reached out to Tym Tombar at SW Energy Capital, who eventually became our equity partner in mid-March 2011.

Then I got the offer to join Angus, formerly Bravo Natural Gas, an NGP company led by Charles R. Stephenson. We built a 105,000-acre project in southeastern Colorado on old UPRC land-grant acreage. Really good geologic work was done out there in Colorado—everything that Anadarko Petroleum and UPRC did, every section, they filed 30-plus-page reports. There is a plethora of data, it just needed to be looked at from an unconventional point of view.

Investor What is Eagle II's strategy?

Vandervoort We are focused in the Mid-continent. When we are not evaluating proved developed producing (PDP) acquisitions, we are looking to generate organic opportunities in the Mississippian and Woodford. Unfortunately, organically leasing 10,000 acres and growing through the drillbit is much easier said than done. Right now, there are a lot of buyers in the market. The most likely scenario for Eagle is using our track record as operators to facilitate joint ventures.

Investor Why do you like the Midcontinent?

Vandervoort I love the knowledge base. First, you've got to have hydrocarbons, and the Midcontinent has that—but it's also the history of the work done here, the repository of data available to everybody. You can access data on any play you want. Among the geological societies and the SPE, for example, the information sharing is awesome. Everyone is interested in what others are doing and wants them to succeed.

In Oklahoma, the regulatory environment is operator-friendly. Geologically, the basin is full of stacked pay. We have world-class source rocks underlying fractured carbonates and tight clastics—really every depositional environment and engineering problem that could need to be solved. One thing is for sure, if you have one play that can burden the costs of infrastructure, then you improve the economics to develop other zones that otherwise could not bear those costs.

To me, David Chernicky [chairman and senior geologist of conventional-focused New Source Energy Partners of Oklahoma City] is the prime example of a modern-day wildcatter—he wrote the book on moving water and building infrastructure.

Investor Any thoughts on how unconventional activity is evolving?

Vandervoort There's so much going on it's almost hard to get a good sense of it. How long have we been drilling horizontally? Not long enough. Do we really know the actual life for a horizontal well—10 … 20 years? We haven't had enough time to forecast the actual production potential with any certainty.

From the standpoint of evaluating and buying assets, the key for me is looking at everything from a statistical point of view. If I'm evaluating different projects in different reservoirs, I want to know the minimum EUR to get a 10% IRR (the worst-case scenario IRR). This should be common practice in unconventional plays—after all, numbers never lie.

—Susan Klann

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