Inadvertently or otherwise, Chapman Amend timed his entry into the oil and gas industry just right. He graduated from Texas Tech with a degree in engineering in 2007 and set out for Corpus Christi for a job with El Paso Corp. The US shale plays were still nascent, but times in the industry were good.

Amend began rotations in El Paso's mandatory two-year training program for engineers. The company had about 60 rigs running, mostly targeting conventional horizons. “The Haynesville wasn't even on our radar yet,” Amend recalls. But soon, that would change.

After about a year of completions work in South Texas, Amend got the call to join a team slated for work in North Louisiana's Haynesville shale. “We don't really know what it is, but you're going,” was the gist of the company's background for the Haynes ville team. An avid outdoors-man, Amend was reluctant to leave Corpus Christi, but the move would place him at the forefront of the horizontal shale play boom.

The team went to work figuring out how to drill sideways in the shale. Many of the major operators were also in the Haynesville hunt, increasing the speed at which they collectively cracked the drilling and completion code.

After about six months, El Paso reassigned Amend to the Eagle Ford shale—“same scenario, different play,” he says. The company began drilling in Webb County and hit an “excellent” gas well.They moved across the acreage defining the boundaries of gas and oil production in the shale.

By 2011, Amend was headed for a new assignment: to solve the drilling equation in West Texas' Wolfcamp shale. El Paso's idea of transferring certain people and sharing best practices through the evolution of the shales proved to be very effective, he says.

He returned to the conventional arena in his last year with El Paso, but the successful exploration wells he drilled in South Louisiana and Utah struggled to compete for capital against the shales.

Last spring, Ed Butler, senior vice president of private-equity-funded Stonegate Petroleum Co. LLC, Houston, hired Amend as drilling manager. Stonegate, funded by Pine Brook Road Partners, had picked up significant Eagle Ford acreage beginning in 2007, sat tight, and now was building an operations team. After a year Amend describes as “exciting,” the company's Eagle Ford program is flourishing, with more than 30 wells drilled in 2013 and twice as many expected for 2014. In a recent interview, Amend described the company's strategy and his accomplishments to date.

Investor What were the first challenges you faced at Stonegate?

Amend We had a board meeting shortly after I joined, and I made a lot of promises. Expectations were high. I'm young to be a drilling manager, but given the training and experience I gained at El Paso, I felt ready for the challenge. I had a plan of how a drilling organization should be run in a resource play and was ready to start. Stonegate had one rig running and four wells drilled prior to my arrival. To meet our goals, I figured that we needed to identify and run two efficient rigs. Also, I needed to assess personnel and procedures and get the right people in the right place. One thing I promised the board was that I wouldn't let Stonegate go through the learning curve as a new operator. I went through it, and I wasn't going to make everyone else have to learn it. It took about a month or so to find the right rigs, figure out the team, get everyone to buy into the plan and procedures, and begin to execute efficiently.

Investor How have you improved operations?

Amend When Stonegate began drilling, its cost was close to $3 million per well drilled and cased, and average drilling days were around 20; right now, we're averaging $1.5 million and seven drilling days. It's made a big difference getting the right field personnel in place, executing a proven procedure and utilizing efficient rigs. We expect to hit 10,000 barrels per day of production this year.

Investor Were there technology challenges to overcome?

Amend In order to improve well economics, I was asked to figure out a way to eliminate an intermediate casing string that was being run to case off a loss circulation zone. We were successful due to altering current drilling practices and incorporating certain loss circulation material when necessary.

Investor Do you have roots in the oil and gas business?

Amend Yes, my father has more than 35 years in the industry and in the mid-1980s founded Amend Energy. Today he's a senior vice president of land at Houston Energy. My two brothers are also in the business.

Investor I hear you volunteer with a water-well-drilling nonprofit.

Amend Yes, it's Living Water International, which drills water wells in villages around the world. I spent a week with them in Guatemala this past fall. The village had no sanitary water source. We drilled a successful well to 150 feet. The dedication, when the well was turned on, was very special. It's the most important well that I've ever been a part of.

—Susan Klann

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