Denver start-up Cirque Resources LP, helmed by president and chief executive Peter Dea and chief financial officer Neil Stenbuck, has recently hired an engineer to look for acquisitions and is starting to lease acreage. The initial focus will be in the Rockies and "a few other areas," Dea said while attending EnerCom Inc.'s The Oil & Gas Conference in Denver recently.

Unlike many start-ups, Cirque is not backed by one of the big name-brand private-equity firms. "We don't have the usual capital sources. We went with a small boutique, and some institutions known to me and Neil, and friends and family. The institutions went with us because we had delivered to them in the past at the two companies we were with."

Indeed. Dea was CEO of Western Gas Resources, which was acquired by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC) last year for $4.7 billion. Stenbuck was with UMC Corp., a Denver independent that was a predecessor to Westport Resources, which was acquired by Kerr-McGee Corp. (now also part of Anadarko).

An avid mountaineer, Dea says he named the company Cirque "because a cirque is a bowl-shaped collection of snow and rock, and we want Cirque to be a collection of good people and good assets."