Meet Mark Hiduke, the 27-year-old who co-founded a $100M oil company in Dallas

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Jake Dean

The 27-year-old Mark Hiduke co-founded PCORE with $100 million in private equity from Natural Gas Partners.

Nicholas Sakelaris

Staff Writer- Dallas Business Journal

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Six months after securing $100 million from Natural Gas Partners to create PCORE, Mark Hiduke is moving into his new office on the 49th floor of the Chase Tower in downtown Dallas.

The 5,000-square-foot office sits on the east side of the famous hole atop the building, which seems appropriate because the Dallas-based exploration and production plans to drill holes into the Wolfcamp Shale in West Texas.

After helping Pioneer Natural Resources divest assets from Africa to Alaska, Hiduke and three other partners decided to venture out on their own this year.

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The Southern Methodist University graduate had a front-row seat to the booming success Pioneer (NYSE: PXD) had drilling horizontal wells in the Permian Basin. Pioneer is the top acreage holder and producer in the Permian, the biggest shale play in the country.

"Every couple months or so, a new well result would come on and it would change your idea and understanding of the play," said Hiduke, who sat in his corner office overlooking Uptown Dallas and Dallas Love Field. "It became something bigger and better each time. That resource is fantastic."

He wanted to duplicate that success with his own startup. So he joined three other partners who range in age from 30s to 50s to found PCORE. (Hiduke turns 28 next week).

It has been a real roller-coaster of a year. He left Pioneer in April and got confirmed funding from Irving-based NGP in May.

PCORE used that newly found capital to make its first acquisition in July. Today, the company has more than 2,000 acres and is considering adding another 5,000 to 10,000 acres, Hiduke explained.

Nicholas covers the energy, manufacturing, aviation and transportation beats for the Dallas Business Journal. Subscribe the Energy Inc. newsletter