Management

Mr. Williams is a career entrepreneur with an expertise and track record of identifying premier oil and gas plays at their respective inflection points.  With over 18 years of industry experience, he has an exceptional history of creating value by assembling high quality oil and gas assets, delineating the underlying resource potential and monetizing the asset base for significant returns on invested capital. Mr. Williams continues to build on his legacy of success with his existing team of best in class technical and commercial professionals in the latest iteration of Elephant Oil & Gas.

Mr. Williams cut his teeth in the oil and gas business working as a petroleum landman in Arkansas under the tutelage of a well-respected industry veteran. Together, with his mentor and a small team, they assembled and monetized a large acreage and royalty position in the Fayetteville Shale. He went on to co-found the original Elephant Oil & Gas in 2006, spending the next six years building the company into a successful privately owned oil and gas operator. Under his leadership, Elephant implemented a lease-and-drill strategy, targeting unconventional prospects in the Fort Worth Basin, the Midland Basin and the Delaware Basin. Mr. Williams sold Elephant to Talon Oil & Gas II in 2012, and stayed on as an EVP, until forming Talon Oil & Gas III in 2015. As CEO of Talon III, he led his team in identifying a unique opportunity in the emerging northern Delaware Basin and oversaw the consolidation of high-quality sub-scale producing and non-producing assets. The company sold its position in the summer of 2017 to Marathon for an impressive return on investment.

Prior to entering the oil and gas industry Mr. Williams worked in finance and real estate. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Williams is a member of American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Society of Petroleum Engineers, American Association of Professional Landmen, the Dallas Petroleum Club, the Dallas Wildcat Committee, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and the Dallas Chapter of Young Presidents Organization.

Mr. Flumerfelt has over 25 years of experience in upstream engineering and engineering leadership. With a proven track record of value creation, Ray has taken on roles of increasing responsibility throughout his career.

At Pioneer Natural Resources, Ray served as Engineering Director over Pioneer’s Wolfcamp Shale Development. In this role, he was responsible for all engineering design aspects of Pioneer’s Permian Basin field development, including completions design (~$1 billion annual capital budget), well spacing, and artificial lift design. Under his leadership, Ray’s team was able to increase production per well each and every year. Over 4 years, this resulted in over 50% improvement in per-well recovery through completions designs alone. Other improvements in performance came from optimizing spacing and stacking strategies, targeting, and artificial lift. As Pioneer’s Corporate Engineering Manager, Ray reported directly to the COO and he was accountable for the quality of engineering work performed throughout the organization. Through recruiting, pay for performance, and other initiatives, Ray substantially upgraded the quality engineering work performed at Pioneer.

Ray has a track record of establishing quality positions in new plays and acquiring value adding positions to existing plays through acquisition. As Reservoir Engineering Manager during the start-up phase of Matador Resources, Ray was instrumental in helping Matador establish early positions in Haynesville Shale. At Shell, Ray helped lead Shell’s acquisition of Amoco’s Michigan Reef trend properties, increasing Shell’s position in the play by over 30%.

As a reservoir engineer, Ray has published numerous peer reviewed articles in SPE journals, taught industry short courses on a variety of reservoir engineering subjects, and has performed consulting studies for leading companies, such as Conoco Phillips, YPF S.A., and Colgate Energy.

Ray received his BS and MS degrees in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University. 

Mr. Van Horn is a widely respected geoscientist with a deep understanding of operational geology, sub-surface mapping, geotechnical data analysis and geoscientific evaluation. He has drilled hundreds of wells, conventional and unconventional. He has also conducted subsurface delineation programs in multiple basins and states. Throughout his career he has evaluated deals in various basins throughout Texas, Mid-Con, and the Rockies using a multidisciplinary approach that utilized geochemical, petrophysical, geological and reservoir engineering data. He is experienced and highly capable with extensive Rockies and South-Central U.S. experience.

Prior to joining Elephant Oil & Gas as Vice President of Geoscience, he served as Senior Geologist for Talon Oil & Gas III where he was part of a strong subsurface team that evaluated and identified the geologic potential in the northern Delaware basin which had been largely overlooked and underestimated up to that point. His technical evaluation provided the foundation for Elephant to launch a successful acquisition campaign in the area.

Before joining Talon Oil & Gas III, Mr. Van Horn worked as a Senior Geologist with the appraisals and new ventures team for Sandridge Energy, focused on the Mid-Continent, Permian Basin and Rockies, and as Lead Operations Geologist with Highmount Exploration & Production, drilling science and development wells in the Permian Basin. He began his career as a Geologist with ZaZa Energy, where he was an Operations Geologist overseeing the day-to-day geological operations of a multi-rig program in the Eagle Ford Shale.

Mr. Van Horn earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Prior to college, he worked on the blue-collar side of the oil industry. Working on oil rigs, in refineries and offshore he learned many different trades. He is also a proud United States Army Veteran.

Mr. Thompson has over 15 years of industry experience as a professional landman for upstream oil and gas projects where has worked in a variety of roles and in multiple basis throughout the US, with a focus on the Permian Basin, Powder River Basin, Barnett and Haynesville. He has demonstrated a successful a track record of assembling large acreage positions through organic lease acquisition and A&D.

Prior to joining the current iteration of Elephant Oil & Gas, Philip served as Partner and Executive Vice President of Land and Business Development for Pony Oil Capital where he was responsible for building a non-op business focused primarily on the northern Delaware Basin as well as the Midland, Haynesville, Powder River Basin and DJ. He was responsible for business development, due diligence, strategy, and managing all land and legal efforts for Pony.

Prior to joining Pony in 2021, Philip served as the VP Land in multiple iterations of Elephant Oil & Gas from 2011 through 2021. Under Talon III, he was responsible for identifying key acquisition targets for a successful acquisition campaign on the New Mexico side of the Delaware Basin that was divested to Marathon in 2017. Previously, he began his professional career as a land manager for Dale Resources in 2006 where he gained valuable experience in various lease acquisition, title and management roles in the Barnett, Permian and Haynesville.

Philip graduated from Texas Christian University with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from the Neeley School of Business. He is a member of the American Association of Professional Landmen as a Certified Professional Landman, the Dallas Association of Professional Landmen, Wyoming Association of Professional Landmen, the ADAM Energy Forum Dallas, and YPE.