BRIAN NELSON

Mr. Nelson’s career in oil and gas spans over two decades, principally in CFO and other senior executive roles, with experience in corporate finance, financial reporting, risk management, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, corporate planning, and commodity price hedging through financial and physical derivatives. 

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Prior to Covenant, Mr. Nelson cofounded PetroStone Permian, LLC (PSP) with Andrew Wilmot in July 2018 to focus on the acquisition and divestiture of non-operated oil and gas assets in major US oil shale basins. Mr. Nelson worked internationally from late 2016 to April 2018 as CFO for Ping Petroleum UK, Ltd., a small UK North Sea start-up based in Aberdeen, Scotland. He cofounded his first oil and gas start-up in August 2011 when he partnered with a talented landman to transform Energy and Exploration Partners, Inc. (ENXP) from a land company into an oil and gas exploration and production company. Within the first year of this partnership, ENXP raised roughly $20 million in mezzanine debt capita and leased approximately 55,000 acres in East Texas. ENXP ultimately became a non-operated oil and gas company when it sold 75% of this acreage position in two tranches to two large public companies for roughly $100 million. In total while at ENXP, Mr. Nelson led, structured, and closed over $1.5 billion of capital and A&D related transactions. 

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Prior to ENXP, Mr. Nelson served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Great Western Oil & Gas, LLC (GWOG) from October 2010 to May 2011, where he refinanced the company’s $20 million revolver with a $80 million derivative-protected term loan from Deutsch Bank, part of which was purposed to finance development of non-operated oil and gas assets. From 2002 to 2010, he served as Vice President of Finance for ATP Oil & Gas Corporation where he and ATP’s CFO arranged roughly $9 billion in private and public equity and debt financings. This capital facilitated ATP’s strategic shift from the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Shelf into the Deepwater GOM where $100 million well costs and $500 million floating production platforms are the norm. On one of ATP’s early and more successful Deepwater GOM developments, “Gomez” located at Mississippi Canyon 711, Mr. Nelson structured and sold a 1 million Boe term override (55% oil) for approximately $82 million to two large financial institutions. From 2001 to 2002, he worked on a team of equity research analysts at Frost Securities, covering the global oil market as well as a portfolio of 18 public oil and gas companies. Mr. Nelson still writes and publishes research articles on the global crude oil market on Seeking Alpha. 

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Mr. Nelson graduated with a Bachelor of Economics degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Business Administration degree from Rice University. He also holds a specialized associate-level Oil & Gas Certificate in Accounting from the University of Houston. Mr. Nelson and his family currently reside in Fort Worth, Texas.