?Serial entrepreneurs: Introduced as among “those serial entrepreneurs” by Oil and Gas Investor editor-in-chief Leslie Haines during the recent 7th annual A&D Strategies and Opportunities conference, Tom Meneley and his Houston-based Plantation Petroleum Corp. (PPH) has seen no fewer than four iterations of the company. Each company was sold for a healthy profit.


Founded in 2001 by Meneley, who spoke at the conference, PPH I bought Maynard Oil Co. of Dallas, and later sold it to Forest Oil Corp. of Denver. Next, PPH II acquired Zia Energy Inc., a Hobbs, New Mexico, family-owned company, and Meneley sold to Range Resources Corp. on June 2005.


In December 2005, PPH III acquired assets in southeastern New Mexico from an independent based in Midland, Texas, and then sold the company to EV Energy Partners LP. Finally, PPH IV began in 2007 with a set of nonproducing properties in southeastern New Mexico from PPH III.?By the end of the first quarter of 2008, PPH IV had amassed a total of 26,000 acres in southeastern New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle and North Louisiana.?So what is the trick to PPH’s successful strategy of buy-low-sell-high? “Buy the old guy,” says Meneley.