Searching in the Oil and Gas Upstream sector?

I was wondering if any of you had experience or were aware of searchers in the Oil and Gas space, specifically upstream / operators... such as buying oil wells or drilling new wells?


I am familiar with the traditional Private Equity groups sponsoring teams (which sounds similar to a search), but I was more curious if there is any deal flow within the Searchfunder community. I have had talks with the larger private equity groups, but they generally need a deal in hand and are also looking for minimum $100 MM investment and want to drill new wells. I'm more interested in smaller deals with existing wells (no drilling required to return the investment), but I haven't seen many opportunities for capital funding for those smaller deals. These producing wellbore deals (no drilling) also tend to be lower risk, and therefore lower reward, so they rarely meet the private equity group's requirement for return on investment.

Any feedback is much appreciated, thank you Searchfunder community!