Texas Shale Oil has a team of key executives and operations management personnel who have extensive North American and International oil industry and mining industry experience. They are responsible for hundreds of millions of barrels of production. The team’s combined industry experience record exceeds 400 man-years.
Most of TSO’s management team experience, prior to working with TSO, has been with major international oil, gas and mining companies but it also includes working with small and medium-sized private and publicly-held companies. Titles and management roles below vary per project and assignment according to need.
Executive Management Team
Ronald Cormick, Ph.D.
President and CEO of Texas Shale Oil Inc.
Ron has BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in Geology & Geochemistry and has worked for major mining and oil companies, including: Noranda, AMAX, ASARCO, Silver Standard, Mobil, Exxon, and Conoco. He has over 45 years of experience in roles including: executive management, research scientist, explorationist, new ventures director, and head of oil field operations. He has served on industry and governmental committees and organizations, including the President’s Commissions on Technological Superiority. Selected by Dr. Frank Press, Chief Science Adviser to President Carter, he served as the extractive industries’ expert on a sequestered team of 25 specialists commissioned to brain-storm future break-through technologies and it unexpectedly produced the concepts that led to President Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” and the end of the Cold War.
Larry Eastland, Ph.D.
Corporate Secretary/Treasurer of Texas Shale Oil Inc.
Dr. Larry Eastland has served four U.S. Presidents including Staff Assistant to the President; U.S. Delegate to the World Tourism Organization; Director of Operations for the Summit of Industrialized Nations; and, Deputy to the Undersecretary of State. He is a combat decorated U.S. Marine Corps officer. He is a seasoned entrepreneur, and leads an international business advisory group that has provided business services for more than three decades on four continents. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of several companies, and serves as Secretary-Treasurer of Texas Shale Oil International.
Charles Payton, Ph.D.
Strategic Development Advisor
Following an education including BS, MS and PhD in Geology, Charles has 50+ years widespread experience in oil and gas research, exploration and production operations for large integrated oil companies (Conoco Inc., Mark Producing, etc) and small independents (President, Oil & Gas Division, American Trading and Production Corp). Charles has the creativity to generate and/or evaluate prospects that fit the Company’s priority goals, Areas of responsibility include strategic oversight of identifying and qualifying drilling prospects, building viable work programs & budgets, providing proforma financial analyses. Since 1992, Payton and Cormick have worked together on projects for predecessor companies, including Eastern European projects, for more than 12 years.
John Vickers III
Corporate Counsel
John is a graduate of Texas Tech University, University of Texas and New York University with degrees in finance and law. He was a partner in the law firms Cox & Smith and Russell & Vickers in which his primary areas of practice were structuring complex business transactions, oil and gas including upstream, midstream and E&P projects, acquisitions, all areas relative to startup businesses and financial transactions such as raising capital through securities offerings. Some of the diverse businesses which he started or acquired and was a director, officer and substantial owner, include a 150 unit apartment complex, an oil and gas company, a hospital and an office complex. He was Chairman, COO, Chief Regulatory Officer and General Counsel for American Dental Technologies, a fully integrated international company with over 200 employees that developed, manufactured and sold lasers and other medical equipment. Negotiation and structuring of startup or acquisition of business ventures, oil and gas and financing continue to be his areas of concentration after over 40 years of practice.
Operations Management Team
Haley Manchester
Chief Financial Officer
Haley has many years of downstream experience with both Mobil and Caltex (Chevron-Texaco). He is globally-experienced in finance, accounting, geo-socio-economic strategy, business development, sales, marketing, and distribution management. He speaks several languages fluently, including Vietnamese, Japanese, and Khmer and has lectured internationally at the University-level in finance/economics-related coursework. He holds an MA in Economics with a concentration on Finance from Trinity College.
Robert Hart
Oil & Gas Operations/Landman
Rob has a BBA in Finance from University of Texas and has been in the oil and gas business for more than 40 years. Trained as a Landman his experience involves every aspect from exploration and development drilling, production, commodity sales, oil services businesses, to buying and selling both leases and producing assets. Furthermore, he is also an accomplished rancher, dealing internationally in cattle markets for many years. Early in his career he formed Pecos Petroleum Corp. (PPC) with Jim Rich, negotiating a farmout from Gulf Oil on a 40,000+ acre ranch and another 21,000 acres from other ranchers in Crockett County, TX. They drilled wells on these leases to depths to 3200ft bringing in oil production from the San Andres formation. In the mid 70’s they formed Pecos Drilling Corp. (PDC) bought four truck mounted drilling rigs to accompany the four contract rigs already leased. PDC and PPC drilled and operated for their own accounts and for investor-owners of the 24,000 acre Big State Ranch. By 1980 a Canadian company bought PPC and PDC. Rob and Jim continued to drill 3 more wells in the Permian Basin Canyon sand and 4 wells in Bastrop Co. in the Austin Chalk before selling that operation. Currently, Rob is the sole owner of Hart Oil and Gas (HOG). In the late 70’s and early 80’s HOG owned and/or operated 28 wells in south-central Texas. When his partner died, Rob divested his interests in those oil properties. In 1979, Rob took a lease from Vickers Oil Corp. (see John Vickers), drilled a well that came in at 200+ bbls/day. It was a new discovery in the Dale Limestone. Rob operated and drilled 5 more wells until the property was acquired by a publicly-held company that developed the oil field with 54 wells of which 49 are still producing from which Rob still receives royalty payments. At this time, HOG is still a partner numerous oil and gas deals in Texas.
Rob is TSO’s most valuable “connector” to the Texas oil industry. Rob, John, Charles and Ron have worked together on numerous oil and gas deals for many years. Another partner, Dr. James Tinkler, was one of the consultants who worked with Ron and Dr. Irina Paliashvili on the writing of the Ukraine Production Sharing Law. He passed away in 2010.
Anthony Huston
Petroleum Operations Specialist
Tony is an on-the-job expert at planning, staging, developing and operating/managing oil and gas projects. After obtaining Trade Certificates for hands-on applications such as “Fitter Welder”, he went to work in the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Australia. Later he attended the New Zealand Institute for Management and Marketing Papers. Tony has 35+ years of experience from contract negotiations and services through to production license operations, establishing oil production with his own onshore hydrocarbon exploration company, including operating a small tank farm facility. During the past 10 years he has consulted for a number of oil and gas companies, primarily in Australia, focused on developing unique well completion technologies in close association with companies involved in horizontal and extended reach drilling. With Geoff, Tony is a co-inventor of production enhancement equipment that operators have discovered will provide pay back in less than 1 month in some cases. His wide reach of contacts in the Australian oil industry provides excellent project opportunity leads for TSO, including the projects listed below. Tony easily meets and works with Australian Industry & Government leaders in his current capacity.
Roice Nelson
Executive Geophysicist (Founder, President, Walden3D Inc)
After completing his BS in Geophysics, Roice worked for Mobil Oil as a geophysicist while obtaining an MBA. Subsequently, he has worked in numerous university and private geophysical research labs, cofounding the industry’s original geoscience workstation company, Landmark Graphics Corporation in 1982. Since 1992 Roice has founded several successful geophysical service companies, providing critical support to oil companies of all sizes in virtually all areas of the world. Roice and Ron met in 1980 while Roice was Manager at University of Houston’s Seismic Acoustics Laboratory (SAL) and Ron was Manager, Exploration Research, Conoco. They’ve crossed paths throughout their careers. Well-known throughout the oil and gas industry, Roice’s service-oriented career has included more than 200 publications, numerous professional society awards and roles of industry service. His most recent cutting-edge technological initiative is called Dynamic Measurement LLC and it includes the merged utilization of geologic, seismic, gravity, magnetic and lightning / electrical data for exploration of both petroleum and minerals. Concurrently, he manages a geophysical service group that is an excellent complement to TSO’s inhouse team and has agreed to subcontract their services.
Les Denham
Senior Geophysicist/Geoscientist
Les obtained his BS in Geology & Geophysics in Australia, and then began a successful 40+ year career by accepting a research job with Seiscom Delta in Houston involving all aspects of seismic exploration –field data acquisition, processing and interpretation. He then spent several years with Newmont Oil conducting geophysical exploration of the US Gulf Coast (on- and off-shore) and the North Sea. Since connecting with Roice, Les has had numerous roles where he’s utilized his analytical, interpretive and workstation skills to integrate geologic, geophysical, and engineering datasets for assessment of oil & gas exploration opportunities and field development in areas worldwide.
Geoffrey Murray
Petroleum Engineering Technologist
Geoff started his career as a Cadet Engineer with the mechanical engineering Design/Build company Fitzroy Engineering, learning all aspects of a successful engineering business. During those formative years he obtained numerous diplomas for relevant engineering systems, worked towards a Masters in Engineering Technology and taught specialized oil industry courses. His 34 years of experience have been with major (Weatherford, worldwide) oil and gas service companies, small oil companies (Stealth Oil & Gas, Houston) and high-tech drilling technology companies including some that he has founded and currently directs. He has several patent applications and publications involving the drilling and completion technologies for modern tight reservoirs and complex geologic environments. Geoff’s expertise includes horizontal drilling, extended-reach drilling systems, reservoir engineering, hydraulics, modeling torque and drag during drilling, financial analyses, and development of unconventional fracturing techniques for tight reservoirs. While with Weatherford, they improved a client’s oil field development success by increasing well productivity more than 30X, taking a negative cash-flow into very positive cash-flow almost immediately. A successful problem-solver, Geoff’s expertise and technologies are critical components of the tool-box offered by TSO.
Anthony Benincasa
Senior Exploration/Development Geologist
After completing a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Earth Sciences, Tony entered the oil industry where he has worked for more than 35 years in increasingly more geologically complex and demanding positions with greater responsibilities. His experience includes such diverse geographical areas as Sudan (Exploration Team Lead for a large multinational), Albania (Exploration Manager for a small junior), the North Sea and the Netherlands as well as Appalachia and western Canada. Throughout his career, Tony has added significant reserves and production wherever he has been assigned. His technical expertise is complemented by a B.A in Economics.
contact info
Phone
+1 281 213 2156
Email Address
Main Office Address
800 Town and Country Blvd., Suite 300, Houston, Texas USA 77024-4559