Arizona Tribune - Energy Flex Fund Hits a Barn Burner in Zapata County as Lower Wilcox Test Maxes Out the Gas Detector

HOUSTON, TX AND ZAPATA, TEXAS / ACCESS Newswire / May 1, 2026 / The Energy Flex Fund, the allocation-style oil-and-gas vehicle managed out of Rise Capital Group, has logged what may turn out to be one of the more eye-catching results in South Texas natural gas this spring. The fund's latest test in Zapata County is being described inside the operation, plainly, as a barn burner (oilfield slang for a well that comes in well above expectations - high pressure, high gas volumes, the kind of result a crew talks about for a long time).

The asset sits on a lease ringed by wells previously drilled by EOG Resources - the modern descendant of Enron Oil and Gas - and targets the Lower Wilcox section locally known as the Roleta Formation. It is the sort of footprint independents have spent the last decade trying to recreate: surrounded by majors-quality offset control, with structural and stratigraphic data already paid for by someone else.

Brent Franklin, one of the managing general partners of the Energy Flex Fund, walked the lease ahead of spud. The 3D seismic interpretation pointed to a specific surface location for the next wellbore, but Franklin made the call to slide the rig over to more level ground before breaking dirt - a small operational decision that paid for itself before the drillstring ever turned.

The rig and the run

For the job, the team moved in RISE Drilling Rig No. 4, a 1,600-horsepower triple top-drive that the Rise's equipment fund 2 acquired the year prior. That vertical integration - a sister-company rig fleet feeding an in-house drilling program - has been a quiet edge for the Flex Fund, allowing it to schedule and execute on its own timeline rather than chasing third-party iron in a tightening service market.

Trouble at the intermediate

The well did not give itself up easily. The intermediate section turned into a fight. As the crew tried to run casing, the formation kept giving in on them - the kind of unstable hole condition that can swallow a string, a schedule, and a budget in the same afternoon. Richard Carrillo, Brent Franklin, and the RISE Drilling crew worked tirelessly through it, weighing multiple options at the rig floor and on the phone with the engineering team to find a way to land the intermediate string and protect the hole.

The pressure on the location was not just downhole. Several of the subcontractors on the well - including the mud engineer - were openly discouraging, telling Franklin and Carrillo flat out that they were never going to get pipe in that well. It is the sort of call that, on most locations, ends with the operator backing off and writing the hole down. Franklin and Carrillo did not.

The answer turned out to be a piece of specialty equipment most operators outside of problem-hole country never end up reaching for: the Reaper - a custom Reaper shoe sourced through Varel.com that is engineered specifically to aid the installation of casing, liner or screen in difficult wellbore conditions. The Reaper shoe is purpose-built to drill with casing, allowing the crew to advance the string through the unstable interval rather than trying to run conventional casing through a hole that wouldn't stay open.

Once the Reaper was on bottom, the intermediate string went where it needed to go. The crew successfully set and cemented the intermediate casing, locked off the troublesome section, and got the well back on plan.

Pegging the Pason

After getting cement in place, the Rig 4 crew kept making hole - and the well started talking. The crew began taking gas kicks and was forced to weight up the water-based mud system past 16 pounds per gallon to keep the well under control. The Pason EDR on the rig floor, the system most South Texas hands rely on to monitor gas, ROP, and downhole conditions in real time, lit up. Total gas readings ran past 13,000+ units, effectively pegging the meter.

In an industry where 3,000 to 4,000 units of gas is enough to get a well talked about, a reading that maxes the Pason is the kind of data point that travels.

What the logs showed

After reaching total depth, the well was logged by RECON wireline. The interpretation revealed multiple sand phases, with the geologic picture from the seismic and logging pointing to a three-way fault-trapped configuration - and, importantly, that trap appears to sit entirely within the Energy Flex Fund's leased acreage. The specific formations encountered have not yet been disclosed publicly, but gas was confirmed in multiple zones, not just the primary Roleta target.

Franklin, the RISE drilling crew, and the partners of the Energy Flex Fund are scheduled to bring the well to completion the first week of May. Industry watchers in South Texas can be forgiven for paying close attention to the rate test that follows.

What it means for the fund

The Zapata result reinforces the thesis Franklin and the Flex Fund have been quietly building all year: that overlooked, overleveraged or abandoned natural gas acreage in South Texas - particularly footprints with existing infrastructure and proven undeveloped locations - still has meaningful upside when paired with disciplined geology and an in-house rig program. With multiple sand phases now logged and a self-contained trap geometry indicated on the lease, the team is signaling that this is unlikely to be a one-and-done. As Franklin put it, from the looks of it, they've got more drilling to do. Due to the fund's continued successful drilling, multiple family offices, private equity companies, venture capitalists, and private investors approached Franklin during this project, looking to deploy capital. Franklin said he would consider it, but likes his model of working on a more relationship-based structure versus a large group of executives trying to control his business.

For the Energy Flex Fund's partners, that translates into exactly the kind of project-level outcome the fund's allocation model was designed to deliver: tangible, fault-trapped gas in a basin with existing takeaway, drilled by a rig the fund's affiliated structure already owns.

A welcome sight in Zapata

The reception on the ground has been almost as notable as the gas show on the rig floor. The locals around Zapata have made a point of telling the RISE Drilling crew they are pleased to see them in the area. Both mineral owners and surface owners on and around the lease have offered unprompted comments to the team - they were happy to see somebody finally getting something done out there. For years, the area had felt like a ghost town, with prior operators long gone and the wellheads nearby quiet. A working rig, a working crew, and a well taking gas changes the conversation in a small county fast.

A pipeline behind the headline

Zapata, by Franklin's own account, is far from a one-off. The Energy Flex Fund is sitting on several additional South Texas gas fields - assets with heavy existing production already on them - that the team is currently working through the leasing process and preparing to drill. The plan is to begin moving rigs onto those projects mid-year, which would line the fund's drilling calendar up directly behind the Zapata completion.

That kind of inventory matters. In a basin where a lot of the early-2010s capital structures left producing fields underdeveloped, having a stack of permit-ready, infrastructure-attached locations queued up - and an affiliated rig fleet to drill them with - is what separates a one-good-well story from a real program. For Flex Fund partners, it also means more allocation choices on the way: more projects to direct units toward as the team rolls out the next phase of the South Texas thesis.

Brent Franklin, Now 36, on Location With His Rig	Brent Franklin as a Young Roughneck in 2012

Rise Drilling Rig #4, Zapata, TX	RISE Drilling Crew at Drilling Location

To learn more about investing in oil and gas, real estate or alternatives with Brent Franklin's platform, visit RiseCapitalGroup.com or the Energyflexfund.com

Investment opportunities are available exclusively to accredited investors.

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Brent Franklin
Phone: 832-965-0822
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Tommy G Takes on the RISE: https://youtube.com/shorts/8sk5yfcW7jw?si=tddLE2ZlfQ6HNEPk

SOURCE: Rise Capital Group

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

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