Highlighting the craziness of this COVID year is this week’s announcement by one Permian Basin driller that it was drilling its first horizontal well in 10 months.
The news came from Ring Energy which said the Badger 709 B#6XH was spud early in the morning on Dec. 2 in the company’s Northwest Shelf leasehold in Yoakum County, Texas. Drilling depth will be 5,000 feet and it will be a one-and-a-half-mile horizontal San Andres oil well.
Ring is the Midland, Texas-based company taken over last fall by Paul D. McKinney, the former SandRidge Energy CEO.
“After drilling the Badger #6XH, the drilling rig will move to another horizontal San Andres location currently under construction with plans to drill another well after the New Year,” said McKinney in the announcement. “These wells will be paid for out of cash surplus currently on hand.”
Upon McKinney’s appointment as CEO, Ring co-founder Tim Rochford resigned as chairman but stayed as an adviser. Then a month after McKinney was appointed CEO, co-founder Stanley McCabe and President David Fowler also quit.
While the turnover of executives at Ring has some major investors worried, McKinney said more has been added to the company’s hedge position in 2021. He vowed to allocate the majority of the firm’s future cash flow to paying down debt.
Investors are still concerned. So much so, that Houston-based investment vehicles American Resources Inc. and SK EnergyLLC are urging shareholders to “withhold votes on all members” in the approaching election of the board.
Source: Natural Gas Intelligence/Ring Energy