Active since the 1950’s, the Cantrell’s are one of the oldest operators and drilling contractors in the basin.
In the 1980’s, Jim Cantrell assumed operations from his father, Royal, who retired after a long, successful career as a drilling contractor in the basin.
With his ever expanding knowledge of the local geology, Jim focused his efforts on upstream production versus expanding in oilfield services. Over the next two decades, Jim built his reputation on developing underperforming leases. With his knowledge of the local geology and downhole experience, Jim found success through drilling new wells, recompleting existing wells, or re-engineering waterfloods, required for successful secondary recovery.
By 2002, Jim’s two sons, Chris and Cory, had become active in the industry. As time progressed over the next 15 years, Chris and Cory became more involved in and responsible for the daily operations. While Cory followed Jim’s passion for operations and geology, Chris focused on the business and development aspects of their business. With a younger, more technologically savvy generation, Chris and Cory strategically monitored drilling operations and techniques being used in other US basins. Understanding the advancements in geological data, modeling techniques, seismic data, and completion technologies, they envisioned similar success in the Illinois Basin, with a goal of proving out reservoirs previously thought to be uneconomical.
The St. Louis, Salem, and Warsaw limestones are three such reservoirs, located between 3,500 and 4,500 feet. Known to have strong shows of oil, no one could could produce these zones for more than a few days. Operators tried various conventional completions over the years, yet they always resulted in uneconomical success and were commonly avoided.
In early 2012, with a growing interest and knowledge in seismic, Cory focused where these technologies, specifically slickwater hydraulic fracking techniques, could potentially liberate these tighter limestones. In June 2012, they decided to complete the Texaco Bramlett #14 using these new techniques and became the first operators to use hydraulic, slickwater frac a well in Illinois. Their success in proving these 3% porosity limestone could be economical ultimately lead to the sustained, multi-year growth in the Illinois Basin. It is estimated over $1B of outside investment has poured into the basin in the past 5 years.
By 2015, the Cantrell’s interests had grown to over 175 wells and leasehold in excess of 4,000 acres. This growth, combined with strong market conditions, increased application of hydraulic fracking by 3rd parties, and newly invested outside capital eventually afforded the Cantrell’s the opportunity to divest interest in ~2,000 acres, located in the New Harmony consolidated field. Jim started to the process to retire and transition daily operations to Limecreek Energy, started by Chris and Cory in 2015. In addition, Jim was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Illinois Oil & Gas Association for his contribution to industry.
Being self-funded, conservative and capital disciplined, the Cantrell’s have maintained profitability and operational control, even during the worst economic times. Investing most profits back into their sandstone production, between 2016 and 2018, they changed directions to investment more of their profits into deeper, carbonate reserves.
The most recent project, the Barbre, is a $2M 100 acre Mississippian Carbonate lease. In just 18 months, it has produced over 14,000 bbl of oil from just 2 out of the 5 locations. With an estimated 270,000 bbls of reserves yet to be produced, they are targeting the completion of one additional well in 2019 and two in 2020.
Today, Limecreek continues to operate the closely-held, working-interest of the family. As Jim moves into retirement, Limecreek continues to face the reality of covering the higher costs required to develop the Mississippian Carbonates. While achievable, self-funding limits development to one, maybe two wells, per year. Chris and Cory’s vision differs from the historic family norm. Their goal is to accelerate and scale production operations; to develop their leases by partnering with growth equity poised to capitalize on a current opportunity and be provided a potential aggressive return on capital.
