Q&A with Tom Cochrane

Tom Cochrane, SPE, is Executive Vice President of Oil & Gas Operations at Cano Petroleum, an independent producer with properties in the midcontinent region of the U.S. that specializes in increasing production from proven fields using enhanced-recovery methods. Before joining Cano, Cochrane spent more than 15 years as an engineer with ExxonMobil. His expertise includes CO2 and waterflooding, the coordination of injection and production logging, volumetric calculations, and drill well candidate identification. He also has extensive experience in production forecasts and reserves estimates. Can you explain how the creation of Cano came about? In my opinion, Cano Petroleum was inevitable. Jeff Johnson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, spent several years pitching lenders and investors on his concept for a company that would focus exclusively on mature basins. It took a couple of years, but he ultimately did find investors who shared the vision of his enhanced-oil-recovery concept. These investors were able to look beyond the short periods of time when the price of oil was low and instead focus on the fundamentals of supply and demand. Jeff was one of the first to see this possibility and build a company based on these fundamentals. What is Cano’s upstream expertise and its operating philosophy? Cano has significant upstream expertise. My background includes 16 years of experience in secondary and tertiary recovery, including production and reservoir engineering, field maintenance, and production supervision. Production Coordinator John Lacik has 30 years of oilfield experience, including environmental expertise and extensive knowledge of chemical flooding. Cano also has had the great fortune to find outstanding, experienced production supervisors such as Jayme Wollison and Mike Parrish to take care of our assets. We also work with engineering and geologic consultants who have many decades of experience. Our operating philosophy is to keep our people safe and uninjured and to protect the environment. We ensure that our decisions about equipment repairs and operating strategies appropriately position Cano to achieve the highest margins possible in the long term.