PetroMax is a privately owned, licensed and bonded oil and gas operating company with 20 years of proven history in the US Oil and gas industry. Our primary expertise is in oil and gas exploration and operation within the states of Texas and Louisiana. Over our 20 year history, PetroMax has engaged in many diverse oil and gas drilling opportunities ranging from high-risk wildcatting to low-risk, proven infield drilling. In 2003, as our oil and gas portfolio matured, we sought to insure growth and protect assets by steering the company's focus to long-term, low-risk opportunities within the industry.
Our model is oil and gas asset development and growth through low-risk oil and gas resource plays where the oil and gas is proven to be in place and we apply new technology to harvest proven reserves. We believe that natural gas will be the big winner among energy sources over the next decade and we are out to create as much net gas ownership for ourselves and our industry partners as possible, during this current window of opportunity.
After years of geological research, PetroMax found a new niche in the Cotton Valley - Haynesville Bossier Gas Trend in the famous East Texas basin. Historically, the Cotton Valley has a success rate of 96% and offers an exceptional safeguard to invested capital while still offering exceptional upside oil and gas opportunities in an additional 6+ productive horizons, including the Haynesville/Bossier Shale which makes up what is believed to be the largest natural gas reserves in the US and the fourth largest in the world, greatly de-risking PetroMax's exploration strategy.
Since 2003, PetroMax has a 98% success rate. Out of the last 31 wells drilled, 30 have been successful. The one unsuccessful well experienced a mechanical failure and we were not able to complete the well as designed.
Thousands of wells have been drilled in the East Texas basin over the last 70 years. This includes the Cotton Valley Gas Trend. From the surface of the ground to about 13,000 feet deep, there are multiple oil and gas formations that have the potential to produce. In our area, we have potential in shallow layers called Rodessa, Pettit, and Travis Peak formations and we are successful finding oil or gas from one of these layers in most of our deep wells. The primary objective has historically been the Cotton Valley Sand at about 9,000 to 11,000 feet and it is referred to as a "blanket sand" meaning it is depositionally present and filled with gas over a large land area and the gas completion rate is over 96% in this formation. Most recently, we have 3 newly discovered layers (Chesapeake, Petrohawk and other major companies have produced large quantities of gas in these deeper layers over the past 6 months); these layers are known as the "Bossier Shale", "Haynesville Shale", and "Cotton Valley Lime". These layers hold the biggest potential of all, but the data is too incomplete to make predictions about the success rate.