Our History

Nettlecombe Oil Co. Inc. was incorporated in April of 1991. Nettlecombe is an oil and gas exploration firm that utilizes advanced geophysical technologies (such as 3-D seismic) to find oil and gas accumulations, primarily along the Texas coastal plain and in South Texas.

The company has been in the petroleum industry for many years, as shown in the "Our Team" section. Our Chief Geoscientist, Paul Habermas, has 33 years of experience with 18 years in exploration and as Chief Geologist. Charles (Rusty) Winn has 40+ years of experience as a Geologist and Geophysicist and has been working with us since 2012.

Nettlecombe’s first well was the Johnson #1 in Lavaca County, Texas. It was drilled based on a “bright spot” on a seismic chart. It was a successful well which eventually produced over 1 billion cubic feet ( ~ 28.5 million cubic meters ) of natural gas.

From this first project, Nettlecombe has been on a successful performance curve, with a success rate of about 70% through year 2002. From 2002 to the present, Nettlecombe has had a success rate of around 90%, due mainly to our utilization of the latest 3D seismic imaging and state-of-the-art attribute and neural network (AI) technologies.

Nettlecombe began exploring for oil and natural gas in the Miocene, Frio, and Yegua sands in Texas because we felt that the seismic frequencies and amplitudes in the shallow and intermediate-depth sand sections were more valid, dependable and less risky than looking for deep structural plays.

Nettlecombe generates prospects from its large seismic data base and utilizes “Lease Bank” funding partners to obtain leasehold and to help pay for the overhead and expenses (such as land man, survey, etc.) required to generate the prospect. We sell promoted Working Interests (generally on a cash plus “Back-in After Payout” basis) with the Operator taking a significant Working Interest. Once the prospect is sold, it is turned over to the Operator to actually drill and produce the well.

The research required for prospect generation is normally pursued in conjunction with subsurface geology and elements of petroleum engineering. In this respect, Nettlecombe has excellent energy industry associations that establish the impressive scope of their business approach: i) geophysics & geology; ii) petroleum engineering; iii) land & legal and iv) prospect economic evaluations & feasibility studies.

In addition to log and seismic modeling plus direct drilling experience, Nettlecombe has grown to understand the importance of good petroleum engineering and vigilance in production operations as additions to effective earth science. Through careful selection of its industry partners, Nettlecombe thus continues to minimize the risk in drilling prospects.

Each well has different combinations of potential and risk. However, in general, our economic evaluations usually indicate capital recovery (payout) would occur within two years of the completion of the well(s). The well(s) may then provide further multiples of such equity investment during the succeeding years of oil and gas production.



Our Joint Venture Team