SandRidge Bets Against Shale in the Oil Patch

Tom Ward has always considered himself a contrarian. In his senior year of high school in Seiling, Okla. (pop. 1,000), Ward rejected the advice of his principal, who thought the football jock was best suited for a small college, and enrolled in the University of Oklahoma. Later, as co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, he spent some $14 billion on gas assets from 1998 to 2006—when most of the industry was focused on oil—and built the country’s No. 2 gas producer. “Chesapeake grew from a $1 stock to a $30 stock in that time frame,” Ward says with pride.

Today, Ward is at it again, as chief executive officer of SandRidge Energy. Instead of chasing rivals into shale oil fields, he has spent $3.7 billion in the past two years on older reserves, aiming to keep them productive as crude prices rise. The Oklahoma City company on Feb. 1 said it would pay $1.3 billion for Dynamic Offshore Resources, its third major buy of traditional crude reserves since 2009. “I want to go to the place that no one else likes … and stay away from competition,” Ward says.