Greylock Energy, which has legacy assets across the Appalachian Basin, has been actively hunting for leasehold opportunities in the Utica Shale in northeast Pennsylvania.
While still in early stages of its Utica foray, President and CEO Kyle Mork said the company has adopted a ground game strategy of acquiring and then developing acreage.
Far to the west, Greylock recently divested its Wyoming assets three years after acquiring them from a public operator.
Although the assets increased the company’s Wyoming production by 25%, Mork said that knowing when to sell acreage can be as profitable as knowing when to buy.
The divestiture helped Greylock keep its leverage down while and generating proceeds for future opportunities, including potential acquisitions in other areas including the Rockies— or really any basin, Mork said.
Regardless of any opportunity or basin, the firm holds its value on smart and healthy growth for its investors.
With inventory degradation increasingly a topic of industry conversation, Greylock is also positioning itself close to Tier 1 acreage and then optimizing operations well enough generate compelling returns.
Mork discusses Greylock's operations and strategy with Hart Energy's Darren Barbee in this exclusive interview.
Hi, my name is Darren Barbee and I'm editor at Hart Energy. I'm here in Pittsburgh at Hart Energy’s 2025 DUG Appalachia Conference & Expo, and I'm joined by Kyle Mork. Kyle is the president and CEO of Greylock Energy. So, how are you doing?
Kyle Mork: I'm good. Nice to be here. Fun to be at the event.
DB: Great presentation. We learned a lot. First of all, I was very interested to see that you guys are making a foray into the Utica, sort of, in northeast Pennsylvania, and was wondering if you could tell us just a little bit about what you're doing in that neck of the woods.
KM: Yeah, I mean, we've had this position, we've got our legacy acreage because of the conventional assets we own in Appalachia. And so we've thought about the Utica a ton. We've kind of poked around a little bit in the past, but really started looking over the last couple of years of where can we go and put together an asset base for development that maybe the productivity isn't quite as good as the true tier one stuff that we've been fortunate to drill in the Marcellus in Green County and others have all over the basin. Maybe that productivity is not quite there, maybe it's 90% of that or whatever, but we can get a good acreage position, drill long laterals apply, apply all these lessons we've learned, space them optimally set up infrastructure and all that.
And so that was really the thesis, and it's still very early. I think we're encouraged with some of the early results, but really for us it's more about that philosophy. I think it's where the industry's going in general. You're seeing more and more conversations about inventory degradation, and it's easier for me to say probably as a private guy than a public guy, but I think we know that the industry always drills the best stuff first. And so the point of this was can we find positions there in the Utica or other places where it's pretty close and then we can really work to optimize operationally so that the returns ultimately compete in current price environments.
DB: I think you said on stage it’s kind of a ground-game endeavor at this point. Are you waiting to see how things play out with the first few wells?
KM: Yeah, I think we're encouraged, but it's early and as we talked about on stage and with Utica wells, you typically get an extended flat period, and so you don't really understand declines; It's hard to understand ultimate reserves. But yeah, it's definitely been a ground game for us, which is unique. I mean, this is the first time, certainly Greylock, [where] we've put an effort in to pick up acreage and start to put stuff together. And so that's where we've started and we will see where it goes from here. I think we're also definitely open on the acquisition front, right, for Utica or we're open to a lot of other things as well. But yeah, so far it's been ground game.
DB: Sort of on the opposite side of the country in Wyoming, I believe you said that you had divested some assets. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about and why you decided to do that?
KM: That was purely opportunistic, right? We bought assets a little over three years ago from a public operator in Utah and Wyoming. We like both assets. Our teams out there, which were largely employees that came across, did an unbelievable job of optimizing those assets. When we bought it, there were a lot of non-producing wells. They were able, in three years, to return I think close to 75% of those wells to production very economically. So we actually had production increase on those assets. And Wyoming specifically, I think production was up 25%, which is kind of wild for a legacy asset. But as I said on stage, if I've learned anything in this business that's like, you got to be smart when you buy, but you also have to be really smart when you have the opportunity to sell. And so we just had something come across, we thought, ‘man, this is the right decision.’ We weren't necessarily planning to. We were going to drill a well there this year, but we felt like it was the right time and the right thing to do, and also helped us keep very low leverage and create some capital to possibly use for other opportunities.
DB: Including acquisitions?
KM: Yeah. Since we started Greylock with the support of ArcLight [Capital], who is our private equity sponsor, we've looked at acquisitions and as you know, acquisitions are tough and you think something is going to happen and it doesn't. We've had all sorts of deals like that, like everyone does, but we've always been in that mode. But yes, having some capital available puts us in a nice spot to go out and be active in that market. And so we'll see. I'm optimistic that we're going to see this fall more and more gas assets come to market. As you and I were talking about, there's a little bit of rumor mill around all sorts of different things popping up in Appalachia, but we like the Rockies as well, and then we're open to other basins for the right deal.
DB: Yeah, it's kind of an interesting geographical spread between the two, obviously. So I guess I'm really interested in what's the sort of long-term strategy for Greylock.
KM: It's really to create a very healthy, sustainable cashflow in business. I mean, we have built this company from the start. I think a lot of private equity-backed businesses, and certainly if you go back 10- 15 years ago, it was four people and they put some acres together and maybe drilled a couple wells and looked to flip it in a couple of years. We all know that model is, I think, dead and gone probably forever, but we've always been a little unique. And then I think just the personalities of our leadership team and how we think about the world, it was like, ‘Hey, can we really create something that is sustainable and can be here for a long time.’ Capital, partners that all can influence what you do. But we've tried to build a platform that is scalable where we can take on assets. Buying the Rockies assets is a good example.
That is a complex asset. I mean, when we bought it 2000 wellbores, federal land, [Bureau of Land Management] BLM, tribal land, state land, regulatory, multiple states plus the feds. I mean, that was not something you could do with a handful of people. But we were fortunate to have a platform and a platform that we've built to be able to scale from the start. And so as we think about the future, we'd like to continue to scale in a smart way, but we are not going to grow for growth's sake. We want to be a healthy cash flowing business that can provide a good return to investors and hopefully do it for a long time. And that's what I would like to do.
DB: Well, great. Wish you luck on that. Kyle, thank you so much for being here.
KM: Yeah, thank you.
DB: For more information, please visit our website at hartenergy.com. And again, thanks Kyle, I appreciate it.