Brett Barnes is a landman.
His title is general counsel for Presidio Production, a Fort Worth upstream oil & gas company. But Barnes is a landman. Maybe not in the sense of the popular Paramount streamer — “I’ve never been kidnapped by a cartel,” he notes — but a landman, nonetheless.
His daddy was a landman. He worked more than 25 years at Oryx Energy, starting in the days when it was still known as Sun Oil Company. When Oryx was sold, he went to work to Eni, the Italian national oil company. After Eni, it was Stephens Production Company. Landman, through and through.
The younger Barnes continued along that arc. When he graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 2006, Brett took his J.D. to Anadarko Petroleum and ignored it — to work as a landman. He worked more than four years at EOG Resources — as a landman. He left in 2011 for the Forestar Group — to become a land manager. You get the picture.
“This business is in my blood,” Barnes says.
For the last eight years, he’s been GC at Presidio Petroleum, a company that acquires mature, producing oil and gas properties in a market that is hitting a newfound stride. The company is on the cusp of going public thanks to a deSPAC merger announced late last year.
But it was at Forestar, a smaller production pubco, that Barnes says he became a lawyer-landman.
“I had the opportunity to work directly under the company’s general counsel as an in-house attorney while also serving as vice president of land. It was essentially a front-row seat to a crash course in how to be a GC, and it changed the trajectory of my career.”
That trajectory has earned him a new distinction: The DFW Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook have named him 2025 GC of the Year for a Solo Legal Department.
At Presidio, he is both executive vice president and general counsel. He handles all the company’s legal affairs, from employment matters to litigation to complex finance, as well as the acquisitions and divestitures that are the lifeblood of upstream E&Ps. And outside the usual boundaries of your average general counsel, he’s also responsible for the company’s land and administrative functions, e.g. landman.
“As the sole attorney at Presidio, Brett has been the legal and administrative keystone of the company’s expansion,” says Sidley Austin partner Jeremy Pettit in his nomination of Barnes for the award. “He is responsible for everything from back-office administration to human resources to insurance to land functions, all while spearheading all of the legal work for the company.”
Barnes has been at Presidio since its inception in 2017. He led the legal aspects of the company’s financing through its equity partners, eventually settling strategically with Morgan Stanley Equity Partners. He led the legal and land functions of the company’s property acquisition strategy through profile acquisitions as it grew, in size and complexity, to more than $1 billion in reserve value and more than 150 employees.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Brett Barnes discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel and what outside counsel need to know when working with him.
In August, the company announced its intent to merge with EQV Ventures Acquisition Group, a blank check company sponsored by the EQV Group, energy investors with offices in Park Cities, Utah and Oklahoma City. The deal values Presidio at $660 million and will list the combined company, to be known as Presidio Production, on the NYSE with a Fort Worth-themed ticker (“FTW”) as soon as its registration is approved.
The announcement was the culmination of a year of negotiations. And Barnes says he recognizes the importance of the moment.
“For Presidio, the importance is straightforward,” said Barnes. “This deSPAC transaction represents the next chapter in our story. We’ve had a great run over the past seven-plus years with our equity sponsor, Morgan Stanley Energy Partners, and we’re ready to take the next step by accessing the public markets to support future growth.”
The Ties of Texas
Barnes loves life as a landman; but he may love Texas even more, with ties to Texas that were purposeful from birth.
“My parents were actually living in Shreveport (Louisiana) when my mom became pregnant with me. She went to stay with her parents shortly before I was born so her son would be born on Texas soil,” said Barnes.
“Both of my folks are proud Texans,” he added, perhaps needlessly.
He recalls those early years as tough ones for his parents. At the time, there were few opportunities for landmen in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so his father took a position in Houston, leaving Barnes, his younger brother and his mother behind.
“Looking back, I have a deep appreciation for the sacrifices they made. At the time, though, I was mostly just upset about the move to Houston. As I thought about college and careers, I was certain about two things: I didn’t want to go into oil and gas, and I didn’t want to live in Houston. Naturally, my first job out of law school was at Anadarko Petroleum in Houston.”
Being a lawyer did not come as naturally. His mother sold pharmaceuticals before becoming a school counselor. There were no lawyers in his family. No lawyer friends or mentors influenced him growing up.
“Honestly, I’m not even sure I really knew what lawyers did back then,” Barnes said.
As a Texas A&M undergraduate in finance, Barnes says he had expected to become an investment banker. But he graduated in the wake of the dotcom collapse and the Enron scandal. Jobs were tight in Texas.
“For what I really wanted to do, New York was the place to be, and I just wasn’t ready to make that move. Call it the Texan in me. So, I started looking at graduate school. The law, the legal system, the Constitution and big-picture ideas like justice all appealed to me. Of course, I didn’t yet appreciate that those philosophical ideas don’t always line up neatly with well-paying jobs,” Barnes said.
He found firm ground for his career with that first job as a landman at Anadarko. It proved to be a professional epiphany.
“I couldn’t have been happier. I’ve worked in the oil and gas industry ever since, and I absolutely love it,” Barnes said.
“This industry gave my family a great life when I was growing up, and it continues to do the same for my family today. I’ve seen it create opportunities for so many people I know. It’s the backbone of the Texas economy, and more broadly, it quite literally fuels modern life.”
The Landman Excels in GC Role
Barnes came to Presidio, a startup in the Texas oil business, at a time when the oil business was beginning to rebound from a deep downturn. His belief in the business made the offer a no-brainer, as he describes it.
“I had previously worked with Chris Hammack, our co-founder and co-CEO,” said Barnes. “When the opportunity arose to join Chris and Will Ulrich, our other co-founder and co-CEO, and help build a company from scratch, it was an easy decision.”
It was also a challenge. And his skillset has allowed him to excel under pressure, said Sidley partner Daniel Allison.
“Brett has seen just about everything a GC can see during the past eight years at Presidio. He has an incredible ability to get caught up on the issues without getting buried in the issues. He processes information quickly and is good at making quick decisions,” Allison said.
“Building a company from the ground up is hard,” notes Barnes. “In the early days, we had email addresses, a small sublet office space that my co-founders bootstrapped, and not much else. The systems and infrastructure that established companies rely on are easy to take for granted.”
Barnes not only developed the normal legal operations for the company — the development of its governance and tools of operation — he became intimately involved in its financial framework, according to Pettit. In 2021, for instance, he helped create a “whole-company” Asset Back Securities program.
It was, said Pettit, “a brand-new concept in the industry at the time.”
“That deal required creating documents from scratch. Brett also led the company’s legal functions for a refinancing of that ABS in 2023 — another pivotal moment in the company’s history.”
Barnes also led Presidio’s legal efforts around the deSPAC deal. DeSPAC transactions are, essentially, reverse mergers. Without essential due diligence on the merger partner, along with credible financial backing, many deSPAC mergers have proved to be nightmares.
“The deal has not been without complexity, and the recent government shutdown has slowed the process,” said Pettit. “But Brett’s leadership and perseverance was pivotal in the success of the deal announcement.”
Barnes himself traces those skills to his experience as a landman.
“Being a landman was, and still is, terrific. I loved the dealmaking, putting together drilling prospects, the excitement around drilling new wells, and the problem-solving. Invariably, in the oil and gas business, disputes over the use of the surface arise. I have a great deal of respect for surface owners, so I always found it unfortunate when we had problems with them. That said, I also took great pride and care in reaching a mutually agreeable solution to those problems,” Barnes said.
That said, he kinda likes Landman, the series, but not for the grit or the greed or the brawny and intensely decadent lifestyle it describes. In his eyes it’s the gift of civilization for what we make of it.
“As a resident of Fort Worth, I love the buzz the show has brought to our city. It certainly sensationalizes parts of the oil & gas industry and the landman profession; but it also does a really nice job of highlighting aspects of the business most people probably don’t often consider: the dangerous nature of rig work, the economics of the business, the problem-solving landmen and lawyers do, just to name a few,” said Barnes.
“From increased life expectancy to the information age to being able to travel across the world in hours … all these things have happened because we’ve been able to harness an incredible amount of energy from oil and gas. I have a great deal of reverence for this industry and a profound appreciation for my career in it.”
Fun Facts: Brett Barnes
- Favorite book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It’s a great exploration of how we assign value to things, people, and experiences, and a reminder that the journey often matters more than the destination.
- Favorite musicians: I’m a big Turnpike Troubadours fan and glad to see them back together. As for individual artists, it’s hard to beat Robert Earl Keen. I am an Aggie, after all.
- Favorite movie: It’s a toss-up between No Country for Old Men and The Big Lebowski.
- Favorite restaurant and food at that restaurant: Hatsuyuki Handroll Bar in Fort Worth. Anything off the chalkboard menu.
- Favorite beverage: A well-made rye old-fashioned.
- Favorite vacation: The easy answer is snow skiing with my wife and three daughters. The alternative answer is a golf trip to Scotland with the guys.
- Hero in life: Teddy Roosevelt. He embodied fortitude, both mental and physical.