ATX Energy Partners ("ATX" or the "Company"), a newly formed oil and gas exploration and production company, and the successor company to Brigham Resources, announced that it has received a line of equity financing of up to $780 million led by Warburg Pincus alongside Yorktown Partners and Pine Brook.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, ATX intends to pursue early-stage and emerging unconventional resource opportunities where the management team sees the potential for significant value creation by applying the proven operational capabilities that drove its prior successes in both the Southern Delaware Basin and the Williston Basin. The Company is led by Chief Executive Officer Gene Shepherd, who brings over 35 years of financial and operational experience in the energy industry. Most recently, Mr. Shepherd was Chief Executive Officer of Brigham Resources, which sold its Delaware Basin assets to Diamondback Energy in February 2017 for $2.6 billion. Previously, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of Brigham Exploration from June 2002 until its sale to Statoil ASA in December 2011 for $4.4 billion.
Mr. Shepherd is joined by a seasoned team of industry veterans from both Brigham Resources and Brigham Exploration who bring a long and highly regarded track record for developing unconventional oil and gas properties across multiple basins. The senior executive team, all of whom worked together at Brigham Resources, includes Erik Hoover, Chief Operating Officer; J Silva, Chief Financial Officer; Ed Parma, Executive Vice President – Exploration; and Matt Weber, Executive Vice President – Engineering.
"Since closing on the sale to Diamondback earlier this year, we have been actively evaluating new opportunities and are excited to formally begin a new chapter together as ATX Energy Partners," said Gene Shepherd, Chief Executive Officer of ATX. "The fact that ATX will benefit from the same leadership team and partnership with the same financial sponsors that facilitated our early entry into the Southern Delaware Basin in 2013 dramatically enhances our probability for success. We look forward to leveraging our combined experience to identify, delineate and develop unconventional resource opportunities in some new, as well as some familiar but overlooked, basins in the lower 48."
In a joint statement, James Levy, Managing Director from Warburg Pincus, Howard Keenan, Managing Director from Yorktown Partners, and Richard Aube, Co-President of Pine Brook, commented, "We are very proud of our prior success together and are excited to be once again partnering with Gene and the rest of the ATX leadership team on this new venture. We look forward to working with management and are confident that they will again be successful in their efforts to create value in emerging unconventional plays."
