Stephen E. Skinner, BSPE ‘01
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, “Steve” Skinner’s family moved to Texas when he was three years old. Although his father’s career as a civil engineer at the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station exposed him to engineering from an early age, it was a conversation with former UT PGE professor Dr. William Rossen about the challenges to finding hydrocarbons that inspired Skinner to enroll at UT PGE. He received his BSPE from The UT Austin in 2001. During his time at UT PGE, he was a President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers student chapter, as well as the SPE representative to the Student Engineering Council.
After graduation, Skinner started his career with Phillips Petroleum, later ConocoPhillips, and worked many of the company’s Lower 48 assets. There he rotated through various assignments in reservoir, production, and drilling engineering applying the fundamentals of his UT PGE engineering education. When the Fayetteville Shale play in Arkansas began to take off, Skinner moved to Southwestern Energy and helped that company complete some of the first multi-stage horizontal wells in the play. He parlayed these experiences into a new shale development leadership position with Edge Petroleum.
Although these experiences were invaluable to him, Skinner felt the entrepreneurial calling and in 2008 was a cofounding partner of the first of three new companies “bearing” the name Ursa Resources.
The first Ursa was a group of young professionals that decided to “boot-strap” and start their own company. The company successfully sold prospects before deciding to concentrate their efforts into entering the emerging Bakken play in the Williston Basin. During the first iteration of Ursa, he also started Skinner Consulting, through which he was involved in engineering and completing some of the first horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford formation in Texas.
With the second company, Ursa Resources Group LLC, Skinner acted as Vice President of Development, managing the planning & development of the company’s 120,000 acres in the Bakken play in Montana and North Dakota as well as the design and implementation of hydraulic fracturing operations. The company successfully drilled and completed multi-stage horizontal wells before successfully divesting the assets.
Today, Skinner is the Chief Operating Officer of Ursa Resources Group II LLC in Houston, Texas. The third company to bear the Ursa appellation actively explores domestically for frontier liquid hydrocarbon plays to drill while also acquiring natural gas producing properties.
Skinner resides in Houston, TX with his wife Myra and their daughter Sarah Paige. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas. Skinner enjoys running and has completed several marathons. He is a member of SPE, IPAA, and a lifetime member of Texas Ex-Students association. He and his wife are proud supporters of Friends of Alec and the Longhorn Foundation.
