My siblings and I have been approached regarding a lease through Kraken Oil & Gas LLC. Everything that I have found on the company so far indicates off shore drilling, and not land based domestic stuff.
We have been stung once, and I am trying to avoid a repeat, but cant' find anything to backup this company.
If anyone has any knowledge about them, I would appreciate it. This is for the T26N-R51E area.
thanks
Kraken Oil & Gas LLC is a startup oil company funded by one of the largest and most active private equity firms that funds startup oil companies, Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. Kayne Anderson manages something like $15 billion in assets, and is very highly respected by the one guy in the country that tracks startup oil companies almost exclusively, me. The company should be run by Brad Suddarth and Bruce Larsen. Mr Suddarth I think was formerly a Petrophysical & Petroleum Engineer with Shell Oil, and those are some very good credentials. Mr Larsen is a geologist and also formerly with Shell Oil. I show his title in one source as "Portfolio Guru - Global Exploration at Shell", an unusual title to say the least. Its been my experience that: 1) portfolio investments of Kayne Anderson almost always pay their bills, and 2) former engineers and geologists of Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc, are in a unique class of what I would normally describe as highly technically-oriented and accomplished. I'm sure there are exceptions. I would personally think Kraken is a good company, and certainly not a fly-by-night bunch of goofballs, not at all. That's my prediction anyway. I make no guarantees, but I am still the only person I know who specifically targets and evaluates startup oil companies and their management teams and objectives. Typically, Kayne Anderson invests $20-$100 million in its portfolio companies like Kraken. My guess is it probably invested at least $50 million.
And after looking for Kraken's website I found the management page which include biographies for Mr Larsen and Mr Suddarth, substantially what my information showed. It does include some very interesting additional information about Mr Larsen's experience with Shell in The Hague:
We are dealing with Kraken now, leasing in Richland County. They've been very forthright and have answered all questions and concerns we've had so far.