Looks positive, from where I sit. STTX sheds a salary, claws back stock. Gaines wasn't adding much: he and Funk both have investment banking backgrounds. Gaines' tenure as Richfield's chair was marred by the abject failure of management to establish a retail following (the idiots went public without an IPO, forheavensake!) The switch also offers the company the chance to make a statement with the appointment of its next chair, who ideally will be an oil man. STTX's UT properties are tragically undervalued, but that should change next month, as Whiting Petroleum posts production numbers for the Moroni 11M well.
The rumor is that Whiting will pump out the 100K+ bbls of drilling fluid leftover from fracking operations at a rate of 3,000 bfpd. In its recent filing, Whiting indicated that one third of the fluid production on March 4 consisted of oil. If that ratio holds up during the jet pump phase, now just getting underway, the world will take notice. Wolverine's Kings Meadow Ranch well had production of less than 1,000 bopd, yet merited a feature in Oil an Gas Journal. Whiting's discovery in Moroni is potentially much more important, because the Tununk shale is a resource play covering hundreds of square miles, whereas the Navajo sandstone in Covenant is basically a one square mile trap.
When it dawns on the industry what Whiting has done (discoveries of this magnitude are exceedingly rare), all eyes are going to be on Whiting's neighbors. STTX isn't going to develop its UT acreage on its own;it will need JV partners with know-how and deep pockets. This is where bringing in an established oil man with extensive industry contacts should help. It's a space we should all be watching.
