John Pinkerton
Editor’s note: This profile is part of Hart Energy’s Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
After leading Range Resources to discovering the largest U.S. gas field—the Marcellus Shale—John Pinkerton “retired” to co-lead what is now Appalachia’s No. 1 oil producer, Utica-focused Encino Energy.
Pinkerton’s oil and gas career began with Snyder Oil Corp. in 1980, where he was senior vice president of acquisitions. He had joined the E&P after working at Arthur Andersen upon completing his BBA from Texas Christian University and MBA from the University of Texas.
In 1988, he became a director at Appalachia-focused producer Lomak Petroleum that was headquartered in Hartville, Ohio, along the Utica oil fairway.
Lomak was in the midst of thousands of old oil and gas wells, drilling on leases farmed out to it by the nearly century-old gas distributor East Ohio Gas Co.
Pinkerton became president in 1990, CEO in 1992, renamed it Range in 1998 and took over the chairman and CEO posts in 2008.
In the operator’s 2000 annual report, he discussed the state of the Appalachian oil and gas business. Production from properties Range acquired between 1988 and 1997 “fell more rapidly than anticipated and further development of the principal fields proved far less attractive than expected.”
Like E&Ps across the Lower 48, Range was struggling to find highly economic new reserves. And oil and gas prices collapsed in late 1997 into 1999.
Range’s stock was trading in early 2000 at less than in 1990.
But shale happened.
Mitchell Energy & Development had made a breakthrough in the late 1990s in producing economic amounts of gas from the Barnett Shale in North Texas under Range’s Fort Worth Basin headquarters.
While Range didn’t have leasehold over the Barnett at the time, it had 1.9 million gross, 1.7 million net, acres over the Marcellus in the Appalachian Basin.
With its team at its Ohio office in 2004, it decided to reenter a vertical that was scheduled for plug and abandonment and perforate it in the Marcellus instead.
And it put a slickwater frac on it.
The Renz #1 demonstrated sufficient production—a 24-hour IP of 800 Mcf. In 2005, two more Marcellus verticals—Deiseroth #1 and Renz #2—came on with similarly encouraging results.
In 2007, it took the wildcats horizontal with the Gulla #9H. That well came on with 3.2 MMcf/d—as much at the time as a good Barnett horizontal and very economic in the premium-priced, northeastern U.S. gas market.
Three more horizontals before year-end performed even better, coming on with 3.7-, 4.3- and 4.7 MMcf/d.
Range’s market cap in 2000 was about $400 million. Today, its enterprise value is $9.5 billion.
Its production in 2000 was 152 MMcfe/d. Third-quarter 2024 production was 2.2 Bcfe/d.
In 2012, Pinkerton retired as Range’s CEO, becoming chairman exclusively. He retired from that post in 2015 and continued on the board, departing in early 2016 after 28 years with the company.
But his E&P days were not done.
He joined Encino Acquisition Partners (EAP) as executive chairman. There, Hardy Murchison, who had worked with Pinkerton in the 1990s, was looking for an oil target.
The pair settled on one they both knew well from their time at Range years before: Ohio oil.
Pinkerton had drilled through Ohio’s Utica plenty of times in much of his early career when putting verticals in the underlying Trenton Limestone. Among all operators, some 16,000 verticals targeted that formation in nearly 150 years of Ohio drilling into the early 2000s.
In the early 2010s, Chesapeake Energy amassed a large leasehold and began putting horizontals in the Utica. But oil prices plummeted in late 2014 into 2016 and gas futures, in particular, were overwhelmed by new Marcellus and other supply, resulting in capital retreat.
From that exodus, Pinkerton and Murchison saw an Ohio entry opportunity. In 2017, behemoth CPP Investments backed EAP with a $1 billion commitment. EAP then bought Chesapeake’s 900,000 net Ohio acres for $2 billion.
“The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) was key to the story,” Ray Walker, Encino Energy COO, said. “They were really attracted to the fact that John and Hardy had a big idea.”
Walker had joined Pinkerton at EAP in 2017 after retiring from Range where Pinkerton had hired him to open the Marcellus office in 2007 in Pennsylvania.
Today, EAP has 1.2 million net Ohio acres and more than 1,000 wells, making 43,000 bbl/d of oil and 913 MMcf/d of gas. The leasehold is more than 90% HBP.
It was running four rigs and two completion crews—the most among all operators in Appalachia, including those drilling the Marcellus in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Earlier this year, CPP Investments committed another $300 million toward accelerating development.
Pinkerton retired from EAP’s executive chairman post in 2022 but continues with the company as chairman of Encino Energy.
Murchison said, “EAP’s strong foundation and continued success is a reflection of John’s vision, ability to organize great assets and even better people, all with an eye toward operational excellence.”
—Nissa Darbonne, executive editor-at-large