Operating from headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, Start Scientific, Inc. (STSC) is in continual and aggressive pursuit of its corporate objective to take advantage of oil and gas exploration and development opportunities that are overlooked by mid-sized oil and gas companies.
Start Scientific’s is focused on developing leases and/or joint venture partnerships for its four primary projects in Mississippi, Texas, North Dakota and West Virginia. The projects include shallow, deep and horizontal drilling opportunities. Geographically, the projects offer the company diversity for exploration and drilling.
As a progressive oil exploration, drilling, extraction and delivery company, Start Scientific relies on the vast knowledge of its management team, which provides more than half a century of combined industry experience. Leveraging strong industry contacts established by company founder Norris R. Harris, Start Scientific also explores partnership and joint-venture opportunities to further accelerate its growth.
Supported by a management team highly experienced in the workings of natural resources and business development, Start Scientific is well-positioned to achieve its mission to explore low-risk land lease opportunities on properties with known oil deposits, develop facilities on these properties to cost effectively extract the oil, and to distribute the refined oil for sale in the open market.
Investment Highlights
- Aggressive & Strategic Long-Term Focus
Valuable Network of Industry Contacts
Competing in Nice of Lucrative Oil Industry
Management Has 65+ Years of Experience
Asset Holdings in Multiple U.S. States
Current Projects
Acquiring oil and gas assets throughout the world
The Company is focused on developing leases and / or joint venture partnerships for its four primary projects. We believe that these areas of exploration provide a diverse portfolio for the investor. The projects include shallow, deep, and horizontal drilling opportunities. In addition, three projects are primarily oil projects and one is natural gas. Geographically, the projects also provide diversity for exploration and drilling.
Flora Field
The Flora Field is located in Madison County, Mississippi, approximately 20 miles north of Jackson. Discovered in October of 1943, the field has produced more than 7.6 million barrels of oil from the Selma Gas Rock Formation in the Anderson sand. Five wells are currently producing approximately 30 barrels of oil per day.
Based upon the most recent drilling in 1997 by Jordan Exploration, Inc., Start Scientific believes the remaining oil in the Anderson sand exists on approximately 255 acres to the south and 40 acres to the north with remaining oil trapped in the anticline, and believes the additional potential in the Anderson sand could be as much as 737,500 barrels of oil.
The Chalk section of the Selma Gas Rock Formation is about 40 feet thick over most of the field and 10 feet thick in the northern portion. The Chalk section has been overlooked most likely due to lower permeability, and the Anderson sand oil reservoir was more obvious on the well log. However, the Micro Logs from the Jordan Exploration, Inc. wells indicate that the Chalk has adequate permeability in order to be commercial. Due to the extent of the reservoir, the Chalk undoubtedly has significant potential. The Company believes the Chalk has the potential of producing 10 to 20 barrels of oil per day per well. Additionally, with 31 shut-in wells in the field, any work-overs or re-completions should be low risk and inexpensive. The Company believes that the potential in the base of the Chalk section could consist of as much as 2.25 million barrels of oil net to the Company under our current farm-out agreement.
Palacios Texas Field
This is a structure which covers approximately 5,000 acres on which shallow wells were drilled for more than 50 years. It is a complicated fault control structure with known hydrocarbons from near the surface to 16,600ft with gas estimates of a trillion cubic ft. with 30 million to 50 million barrels of condensate.
In 1984, Hunt drilled the Harold Hunt #1 well in which they logged numerous gas and condensate pay zones down to 16,600ft. Reserves in this well were estimated at 20 billion to 50 billion cubic ft. of gas and 30 barrels of condensate per million. Hunt logged and cored pay zones down to 16,600ft. While testing the deep zones the casing collapsed and Hunt lost the deep high potential part of the hole. Hunt completed the well above 12,00ft and the well has been producing since 1985. Cumulative production is more than 20 billion cubic feet of gas plus condensate. The well is still producing.
Sidewall cores indicated all of the deep over pressured sands which Hunt encountered contained gas and condensate. Three attempts to drill and test these sands since Hunt lost the deep part of their hole have all failed. They failed because of the extreme 17,000 lbs of pressure which are present on this structure.
In the 1980s our management successfully drilled and produced wells with greater pressures than this in Mississippi. These wells were drilled below 20,000 ft.
We recently entered into an option agreement for 1,700 acres which is on the top of this structure and is owned by the city of Palacios, Texas. We intend to lease an additional 3,000 contiguous acres and shoot a modern high resolution 3D seismic survey. This will allow us to map the numerous faults and plan a well which can be successfully drilled to below 17,000 ft. We then intend to test all the pay zones which Hunt saw in their well. Our goal is to have 30 wells on this structure; 12 of which will be drilled to 17,000 ft and 18 drilled to 12,000 ft similar to which Hunt produced on the Harold #1.
Williston Basin, North Dakota
The Williston Basin is a massive hydrocarbon ‘super basin’ classified in a 2008 report issued by the United States Geologic Survey as one of the world’s largest oil and gas prospects, which covers an extensive land region including Eastern Montana, North Dakota, Northern South Dakota and Southern Saskatchewan, and is believed to be the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. There are currently 208 active drilling rigs operating in North Dakota alone. This unprecedented drilling activity has created a gold rush mentality among operators and land speculators alike, which has rapidly driven up land and mineral lease costs while big oil companies and independent drillers race to lockup and drill primarily the Bakken and Three Forks opportunities. However, we believe that the Lodgepole Limestone Reef Play represents a superior exploration and drilling opportunity within the Williston Basin.
Lodgepole Geology Summary
The Lodgepole comprises the Fourth and deepest portion of the Mississippian formation, consisting of the basal Madison Group of competent Limestones. This interval directly overlies the Devonian Bakken shale, a highly organic source interval in the Williston Basin, and is overlain by anhydrite-bearing tidal carbonates of the Mission Canyon Formation and the evaporates (salt layers) of the upper Mississippian Charles formation. Accordingly, the Lodgepole effectively constitutes part of a petroleum system that, in total, includes underlying source rocks, reservoir carbonates, and overlying top and bottom seals, with migration pathways related to local porosity fairways, natural fractured channels of permeability, and possible faulting.
Lodgepole vs. Bakken
The Lodgepole represents a unique and significant oil and gas exploration opportunity extending into wide-ranging regions of the Williston Basin that is currently not being pursued by others.
Lodgepole is unlike the Bakken, Three Forks or other formations that require expensive hydraulic fracturing and acidizing to artificially create the local permeability required to produce oil and/or gas. Successful Lodgepole wells are “naturally fractured” permeable producers that do not require artificial fracture treatments and possess the potential to yield substantial quantities of oil and gas over their productive life and at a lower overall cost per barrel of oil produced than any of their Bakken or Three Forks counterparts.
A Lodgepole Well, being vertical, carries an overall AFE cost to lease, plan, drill and complete of approximately $3.5M, whereas the horizontally drilled Bakken Wells cost in the range of $8-12M. Additionally, a successful Lodgepole Well generally yields more oil/gas over its life than any Bakken or Three Forks Well. To-date, the cumulative production of a Bakken Shale Well averages 92,479 barrels, while the average Lodgepole Well production exceeding 1,112,323 barrels.
So, the obvious question is; “why aren’t the big companies who are drilling Bakken or Three Forks Wells, drilling Lodgepole Wells today?” The answer is simply that they tried in the mid-1990’s and other than a few great wells, they failed miserably. Why? Because they did not know how to properly locate, drill or complete Lodgepole Limestone Reef Wells during the 1990’s and they still do not know how to do it today. However we do.
For some time our joint venture partners have been working closely with a private, geo-technical company that has instigated and resultantly proven a reliable method for locating the chimneys of fractured rock that characterize the productive portions of the 4th member of the Mississippian Madison Limestone.
These fractured chimneys extend from the surface down to the top of the Bakken Shale Formation which is directly below the Lodgepole Reef. These chimneys are the direct and natural result of a series of multiple roof collapses occurring over time resulting in the dissolving of 400 foot high organic Waulsortian Mounds within the Lodgepole formation. It was the process of these collapsing roofs, which roofs had previously been supported by the Waulsortian Mounds, that created the natural fractures associated with these chimneys. The results of this fracturing process was fracture porosity within the Lodgepole Limestone Reef Formation can flow and accumulate and intersect through this highly permeable fracture network, though which the accumulated oil and gas can migrate to the well bore and be produced. This proven and reliable method for locating these fracture chimneys employs a combination of surface subsidence remote sensing imaging together with proprietary geo-chemical ‘sniffing” and analyses of each chimney’s micro-seepages emanating from the reservoir and travelling up the chimney to the surface, where it’s presence and spectral chemical composition is detected and measured. These methods allow for the surface position coordinates of each fracture chimney to be accurately measured, along with a determination of whether the fluids contained within each chimney’s fracture system, at the depth of the Lodgepole, is oil/gas or salt water. In short, this “locating method” directs us where to drill and to which sites to drill. It is important to note that we will enjoy unlimited access to this proven and reliable method.
As a final step, we will use reprocessed 3D seismic that substantially aids the drilling process to obtain the highest potential total production and decreases our total drill cost to bring oil and gas to the surface.
In summary, we have the ability to identify and locate Lodgepole Well Sites as well as determine their oil content and then drill these High Graded Wells Sites with extreme efficiency and accuracy.
Clay County, West Virginia
Over the past ten to twelve years horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing has opened up vast amounts of natural gas and oil reserves. Initially the “shale” formations provided targets of opportunity due to its relative abundance, thickness and depth. Although, with advancements in steering technology companies are discovering shallow, thinner reservoirs are now accessible thus opening a whole new realm of opportunity. There are many shallow formations which have proven themselves capable of containing substantial reserves. This is particularly exciting as historic production and e-logs on tens of thousands of vertical wells provide information allowing companies to focus in on areas of opportunity.
The Company is currently in negotiations with a joint venture partner in respect to two oil and gas leases located in Clay County, West Virginia. The leases lay in an area with a long history of development in shallower formations, in particular the Squaw and Big Injun reservoirs. In addition to this, the recent vertical wells drilled through the Squaw and Big Injun reservoirs are valuable insights to further development. E-logs on these wells provide critical depth control and the opportunity to examine the reservoir parameters.
Subsequently, we evaluated the e-logs on these wells and were able to identify sufficient reservoir thickness to justify shallow horizontal drilling. Our goal is to drill 18 wells on these properties over the course of a three year period.
Crude Oil Forecast
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s AEO2014 Early Release Overview, several variables affect oil prices, which are expected to experience a short-term dip before rising again. The AEO reports that, “Oil prices are influenced by several factors, including some that have mainly short-term impacts. Other factors, such as expectations about future world demand for petroleum and other liquids and production decisions by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), can affect prices over the longer term. Supply and demand in the world oil market are balanced through responses to price movements, with considerable complexity in the evolution of underlying supply and demand expectations. For petroleum and other liquids, the key determinants of long-term supply and prices can be summarized in four broad categories: the economics of non-OPEC supply; OPEC investment and production decisions; the economics of other liquids supply; and world demand for petroleum and other liquids.
“Key assumptions driving global crude oil markets in the AEO2014 Reference case over the projection period include: average economic growth of 1.9% per year for major U.S. trading partners and average economic growth of 4.0% per year for other U.S. trading partners. Growth in petroleum and other liquids use occurs almost exclusively outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, with 1.8% average annual growth in petroleum and other liquids consumption by non-OECD countries, including significantly higher average annual consumption growth in both China and India."
“Petroleum and other liquids production in AEO2014 from non-OPEC countries, particularly the United States, increases to levels above those in AEO2013. As a result, the OPEC market share declines to less than 40% in the near term before starting to rise again after 2016. The Brent crude oil spot price decreases from $112 per barrel (bbl) in 2012 to $92/bbl in 2017 in the Reference case (in 2012 dollars), then increases to $141/bbl in 2040 (or about $235/bbl in nominal dollars) as growing demand leads to the development of more costly resources.”
Leadership
Start Scientific’s management and staff collectively retain more than 65 years of experience in drilling, extraction, delivery and management of natural resource companies. In addition to leveraging the expertise of its highly qualified staff, the company seeks out partnerships and joint ventures to accelerate growth and become an increasingly vital part of the ever expanding oil industry.
Norris R. Harris – Founder, Chairman of the Board
Start Scientific founder and Chairman Norris R. Harris has more than 50 years of considerable experience in oil and gas exploration, founding and restructuring of oil and gas companies and in oil and gas drilling and operations. He also has an extensive base of contacts in the oil and gas industry, and has served as an independent oil and gas operator and consultant for various independent oil and gas companies. Experience includes:
- Owner and operator of May Petroleum, Inc., Range Resources and Gulfport Oil And Gas, Inc.
CEO and president of Gulfport Oil & Gas, Inc.
Founder and president of Centex Oil and Gas Inc., (Name changed to Cenergy) and Basin Exploration Corp.
Geophysicist with Mobil Oil Corporation, where he worked in Turkey, Austria, Holland, England (North Sea) and Nigeria
Officer or director of Texas Arkansas Petroleum Company
Chairman of King Resources, Inc. and its holding company Gulfport Oil & Gas, Inc.
Director of Gulfport Oil & Gas, Inc.
Member of the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) and Emeritus Member of the Society Exploration Geophysicists
Kenneth Denos - Director
In addition to his service as a non-executive director of Start Scientific, Denos is a director and the secretary and chief compliance officer for Equus Total Return, Inc. (‘Equus’), a closed-end fund traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Denos is also the chairman and CEO of the Acadia Group, Inc., an international corporate finance and investment firm. Denos’ other directorships include London Pacific & Partners, Inc., (a Los Angeles-based advisory and investment firm which specializes in the healthcare, hospitality, and natural resources industries), Vican Resources, Inc. (an oil and gas exploration and development company) and Scorpex, Inc. (a provider of first toxic and hazardous waste storage, treatment, and disposal in Mexico). From August 2007 to June 2009, Denos was the president and CEO of Equus; prior to that time he served as the EVP of Equus. From May 2006 to July 2009 Denos was the CEO of MCC Global NV (FSE: IFQ2) an international financial services and investment conglomerate based in London and traded on the Geregeltermarkt of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. For the past 14 years, Denos has served as a director or principal for several small-cap public companies on the London AIM, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, and the OTC Bulletin Board, and has worked closely with many public and private emerging growth companies throughout the world. In addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Finance and Political Science, he holds a Master of Business Administration and a Juris Doctor from the University of Utah.
Ruben Flores - Director
Ruben Flores is a non-executive director of Start Scientific. He specializes in corporate finance with commercial lenders, hedge funds, private equity groups, and other forms of structured finance. Flores is the founder and has been the president of Definitive Commercial Capital, a Texas-based strategic finance company, since July 2005. Prior to July 2005, he was involved in the real estate mortgage industry. During March 2008, Flores filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and on October 2009 he voluntarily dismissed the bankruptcy. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.
S. Arne D. Greaves - Director
S. Arne D. Greaves was chief executive officer of Start Scientific from May 2012 to August 2013. Since May 2012, Greaves also has been a member of the Start Scientific’s board of directors. Greaves has been working in the oil and gas industry since 1983. In May 2001, Greaves co-founded Carpathian Energy Companie Petroliera S.R.L., a Romanian oil and gas production company, and has actively been involved the acquisition of concessions and development plans for reentries and development of new wells. Since November 2007, he has been the president of Livingston Operating Company, LLC, a family-owned oil and gas production company, based in Jackson, Mississippi.