Christopher Barden
Mr. Christopher Barden has 17 years of industry experience in all phases of engineering. Mr. Barden began his career with Conoco in 2001 (which became ConocoPhillips in 2002) as a field-drilling engineer in South Texas, San Juan Basin and Texas/Oklahoma Panhandles. In 2005, Mr. Barden became a senior engineer with South Oil, Inc., running operations for a shallow Dakota gas play in western Colorado. During this time he also worked for that company in the South Texas Vicksburg and Maverick Basin plays, and on Wolfcamp and Canyon projects in West Texas. From late 2005 to 2008, Mr. Barden was a senior engineer with K&M Technology Group, LLC. K&M is a specialty drilling engineering firm that specializes in extended reach and horizontal drilling design and operations. Some highlights of Mr. Barden’s activity while at K&M are as follows: Was the well site engineer for a well for Chevron in the Gulf of Mexico, which was drilled to 31,500’ measured depth with a true vertical depth of only 10,500’, extending almost 6 miles to encounter productive reservoirs. This well set a world record by setting 26,700’ of 9-5/8” casing. Taught horizontal and extended reach drilling techniques to most of the major oil companies. Mr. Barden taught these schools worldwide in the USA, Scotland, Vietnam, Trinidad and Azerbaijan. Southwestern Energy contracted with K&M to assist their drilling program in the Fayetteville Shale play in Arkansas. They had 12 rigs working the Fayetteville shale play. Mr. Barden was the engineer assigned to Southwestern. When he began working with Southwestern, they had major problems with 1 in every 3 wells, with sticking pipe and other hole problems, causing the AFE cost to be overrun by double or triple. Mr. Barden implemented a training program for all employees associated with the drilling activity, from engineering managers down to the rig hands employed by the rig companies. Mr. Barden also spent time as a well site engineer overseeing the operations. After 13 months, Southwestern eliminated the majority of the drilling problems, increased the drilling lateral length from 1,700’ to 3,000’ and still cut the drilling cost by 20% by improving drilling practices and well design. Mr. Barden joined Mantle in 2008, and along with Mr. Barden and Franklin, supervised the drilling and production of 3 wells in South Louisiana, 7 underbalanced Buda wells in South Texas, 9 Eagle Ford Shale wells in South Texas, and 3 completed dual-laterals in the upper and lower Austin Chalk in South Texas. Mr. Barden has designed and drilled more than 500 horizontal shale wells in the US and has drilled internationally in Trinidad, Vietnam, China, Azerbaijan, and both UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea and is an expert in horizontal drilling. Mr. Barden has been directly involved in all operations of Mantle Oil & Gas operations including reservoir and economic analysis, geological evaluations, and engineering processes in the drilling, development, and production of Mantle Oil & Gas fields. He is a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines with a B.S in Petroleum Engineering.