Rees-Jones is the owner of Chief Oil & Gas, an exploration and production company. The closely held business is based in Dallas, Texas, operates primarily in the Marcellus shale of Pennsylvania, and has interests in oil and gas fields throughout the U.S. The bulk of his fortune comes from asset sales that occurred from 2005 through 2013.
Trevor Rees-Jones's net worth of $4.56B can buy ...
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The majority of Rees-Jones' fortune is derived from Chief Oil & Gas and the proceeds from asset sales. He owns all of Chief, spokeswoman Kristi Gittins said in a 2014 phone call. Chief is estimated to have produced 279 million mmBTU (metric million British thermal units) of natural gas in 2019, based on production data compiled by IHS Markit and published by the Oil and Gas Financial Journal in July 2017.
Production is valued using the average 12-month first-day price for natural gas price in 2019 as compiled by Netherland, Sewell & Associates, an industry pricing consultant. Chief is then valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales and enterprise value to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization multiple of three publicly traded peer companies.
Rees-Jones has collected more than $3 billion selling assets since 2006. He's debited $425 million paid to two former partners over payment for their equity, as determined from the 2012 lawsuit filings. In May 2012 he sold Chief Gathering for $850 million and equity in the acquiring company. Through two subsequent mergers, those shares became 4.4 million shares in Energy Transfer Partners. Rees-Jones's ownership is no longer disclosed because it's below reporting requirements. This analysis assumes he still holds the shares.
The billionaire bought a one-third interest in PEC Minerals in 2006 for $75 million. The company controls mineral rights to more than 986,000 acres in 31 states, according to its website. PEC is valued based on state- and acreage-level information disclosed by the company in 2013 against typical mineral rights sales per acre in those states at that time. The figure has been adjusted with the average trailing 12-month price of oil - which correlates with mineral rights fees - through July 2019 due to a lack of comparable rights sales data at the state level since mid-2016.
Spokesperson David Margulies said Rees-Jones declined to comment on his net worth.
Trevor Rees-Jones was born to an oil and gas lawyer in Dallas. After graduating from Dartmouth College with a history degree in 1973, he got a law degree from Southern Methodist University and began representing energy industry clients. Rees-Jones realized by 1983 that his life would be miserable if he remained in law, he said in a 2012 video series with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
His experience with the oil industry gave him the knowledge to begin his own wildcatting company, Chief Oil & Gas. During the oil-industry recession of the early 1990s, Rees-Jones cut costs everywhere he could, including paying cash for Dallas road tolls to avoid the extra five cents-per-trip charge for using a toll tag.
"It was a business I really enjoyed, notwithstanding the difficult times," he said in the video for Stanford.
That business became a success by the 2000s. Following the lead of George Mitchell, who was an early proponent of finding new methods of extracting oil and gas in the Barnett Shale basin in Texas, Rees-Jones built exploration and production businesses that employed horizontal drilling and fracturing of rock to access fossil fuels. He began selling off a series of assets in Texas and Pennsylvania in 2005, collecting billions of dollars.
Rees-Jones lives in the Dallas area with his wife, Janice. They have two adult sons, Trevor and David. The family supports a number of educational and charitable institutions through the Rees-Jones Foundation.