After stints in the Barnett, Bakken and Granite Wash, Jack Vaughn is still building his latest venture in the Powder River Basin.
Vaughn’s Peak E&P, backed by private equity firm Yorktown Energy Partners, has a deep track record of building and selling companies. It started in 2002 with a Granite Wash project in the Texas Panhandle, later sold to Forest Oil.
Peak then built and sold a Barnett Shale gas position to XTO Energy, followed by a pivot to oil in the Bakken—ultimately exiting through deals with Enerplus and Kodiak Oil & Gas.
With a history of being a fast mover into emerging plays, Peak moved into Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.
Vaughn’s return to the Powder marked a homecoming of sorts: His career began in Midwest, Wyoming, in 1968, drilling vertical wells into the Muddy and Minnelusa formations. So, when Peak IV entered the basin in 2012, it did so with substantial local experience.
The original thesis was to drill horizontal Shannon wells on the fringes of the legacy Hartzog Draw Field in Campbell County, Wyoming.
“And our first well was really very much a success,” Vaughn, Peak’s Chairman and CEO, Jack Vaughn told Hart Energy in an interview in Wright, Wyoming, this month.
Peak expanded its drilling program into the Turner sandstone after encountering significant pressure while drilling a pilot hole before the first Shannon project.
“Even though our target was the Shannon, we drilled on down and took a helluva kick out of the Turner,” Vaughn said.
“We went ahead and made the Shannon completion, but then we came back and did [the Turner well],” he said.
Since then, Peak has broadened its drilling program across multiple benches within the Powder’s oily stacked pay, including the Parkman, Niobrara and Mowry formations. The company has identified further upside from the Teapot and Sussex zones.
In aggregate, Peak has identified 530 net horizontal drilling locations across seven benches under its 45,000- net -acre position, according to investor filings.
Peak Resources IPO
Last year, Peak filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pursue an initial public offering. But Peak later tabled its IPO process, citing challenging market conditions.
Durango, Colorado-based Peak Resources LP planned to sell 4.7 million common units representing limited partnership interests in Peak E&P. Priced between $13 and $15 per unit, the offering aimed to generate over $57 million in proceeds, according to Peak’s latest filing.
Despite a productive IPO process, last year’s timing just wasn’t right for Peak to launch in the public markets, Vaughn said.
Janney Montgomery Scott served as lead book-running manager for the offering. Notably, Janney ended up being acquired by KKR last year during Peak’s IPO process, Vaughn said.
Then, a prolonged back-and-forth of questions and answers with SEC regulators took longer than the company had initially anticipated.
By the time Peak was able to launch its IPO, the November 2024 U.S. presidential election was drawing nigh.
The oil and gas industry’s prospects looked increasingly bleak under a potential continuation of Democratic leadership, especially in basins controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) like the Powder.
So, Peak took a step back from the IPO to see how the cards fell. And for the most part, “the market has either run sideways or run slightly down,” Vaughn said.
“We still don’t think that the atmosphere is right,” he said.
An IPO remains a viable option if market conditions improve. Fortunately, Peak has already completed much of the groundwork and would mainly need to refresh its figures to proceed.
RELATED
Continental Prepares Full-Scale Ramp Up in Powder River’s Niobrara
M&A interest
Other companies have shown M&A interest in Peak over the years. Peak’s acreage and inventory is in an attractive part of the basin, offsetting acreage held by Devon Energy and EOG Resources.
Despite buyer appetite for M&A, negotiations have stalled due to a disconnect between buyer and seller price expectations.
“We just felt like those numbers didn’t work for us and our investors,” Vaughn said, citing one nixed deal process.
So, nearly 13 years after entering, Peak remains a steady presence in the Powder. The company has a few wells to complete this year.
With oil prices expected to hang in the mid- to low-$60s, Peak is targeting shallower, cheaper projects. The company plans to drill four wells in the shallower Parkman bench in the fourth quarter or first quarter of 2026.
Lateral lengths are also getting longer across the basin. Before 2017, most of Peak’s Powder wells featured 1-mile laterals.
But since then, Peak has shifted its focus to 2-mile laterals. Other operators, including Devon, Continental Resources and Anschutz Exploration Corp. are drilling 3-mile laterals in the basin.
Peak plans to drill and complete between six to 12 Powder wells per year, Vaughn said.
“The more we prove up the value of the assets, the more attractive we become,” he said.
RELATED
Anschutz Charges Ahead with 3-Mile Powder River Laterals
Small E&P, big wells
For a company with just a handful of full-time employees, Peak E&P has drilled some big wells.
Take the four-well Iberlin Fed pad, located on the massive, century-old Iberlin Ranch in Campbell County.
Iberlin Fed included four 2-mile laterals targeting the Shannon, Turner, Niobrara and Mowry formations—and the pad displayed the prolific productivity of the Powder’s sandstone members:
- In a 24-hour IP test, Iberlin Fed #1-31-30H—targeting the Shannon bench—produced 2,445 bbl of oil.
- Iberlin Fed 1-31-30TH—targeting the Turner bench—produced 1,722 bbl of oil in a 24-hour IP test.
Since coming online in May 2022 through April 2025, the four-well Iberlin Fed pad has produced about 1.04 MMbbl of crude, according to Wyoming state data.
While the sandstone benches exhibit strong productivity, they’re more localized and less laterally extensive across the basin compared to the widespread Niobrara and Mowry shale intervals.
Peak brought online four wells on the Leavitt Fed pad during 2023 and 2024, according to state data. The pad featured two laterals in the Niobrara formation, along with one well each in the Mowry and Turner benches.
The biggest Powder River producers, including Anschutz, EOG, Continental, Devon and Occidental, are aiming for scale and repeatability in the Niobrara and Mowry.
Niobrara, generally encountered at vertical depths around 10,000 ft, is the basin’s top target today. Most of the rigs active across the Powder right now are drilling Niobrara wells, Vaughn said.
Producers are still working to unlock the perfect recipe for the deeper Mowry Shale. Ben Talbott, completion and production superintendent for Peak, said Mowry is “kind of the nut everybody’s trying to crack” across the Powder.
“If anybody figures out how to get consistency on every Mowry, that’s going to be the big play,” Talbott said.
But drilling into the deeper Mowry Shale does have its challenges. The Mowry contains some lenticular bentonite beds that have plagued operators’ drilling plans in the past.
“[Mowry is] more costly to frac and you have higher pressures,” Vaughn said.
RELATED
Wyoming Governor: Bet on Powder River Oil to Beat Market Challenges