About Berkeley Geoimaging
Over 25 years of hands-on oil and gas experience
Company History
Berkeley Geoimaging was formed as an oil and gas exploration company built around seismic. The idea was simple: use geophysics to find opportunities that conventional analysis would miss. The founding team brought together James Rector, a geophysicist from UC Berkeley, William Jahnke, and Milton Righetti, who served as attorney and landman. Seismic has been the company's primary prospecting and verification tool from the beginning.
In 2001, the company participated in its first wildcat well in Illinois, acquiring a working interest in the Forbes Lake field. The flagship Warren 1 well has produced over 2.6 million barrels of oil. The field has produced over 4.5 million barrels total.
In 2005, Berkeley Geoimaging, through BGI Resources, LLC, acquired a small producing field in Osage County, Oklahoma, generating just 8 barrels of oil per day. Over the next two decades, BGI Resources, LLC, as operator, developed the field into a 35-well portfolio with exclusive drilling concessions spanning over 100 square miles. Seismic continues to play an active role in identifying and verifying drilling locations across the acreage the company controls in Osage County.
Early non-operated projects included operations in the Gulf of America, New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas, and the North Sea. These ventures built the foundation of experience and relationships that continue to shape the company.
Leadership
Milton Righetti
Manager
Land use attorney with 25 years of experience in oil and gas. Milton has put together and managed a number of oil and gas investment programs with operations across the Gulf of America, Tucumcari, the North Sea, Illinois, and Oklahoma. His legal background is central to how BGI handles acquisitions and landowner relationships, including the company's long-standing relationship with the Osage Nation.
Rex Righetti
Manager
Rex has worked with BGI Resources since 2016. Prior to oil and gas, he trained in financial analytics with Vient Group, a San Francisco investment bank, then designed hybrid software and business process solutions for a Bay Area regional bank. He combines over 10 years of oil and gas management with financial modeling and technology skills: decline curve analysis, investor presentations, and field-level production optimization.
Our Team
Over the past decade, Berkeley Geoimaging moved away from in-house geology and geophysics processing to working with a core group of experienced consultants. It has worked out well. Results have held up and overhead is a fraction of what it was.
On every well, the company brings in local field geologists and logging crews who know the formation. Completion decisions are made as a team. Mike Mackey, a well-known operator in Osage County who until recently also owned and ran a wireline company in the area, handles completions. Mike and Jim Kunard have drilled and managed most of the company's wells over the past ten years.
Jim Kunard runs day-to-day field operations in Oklahoma. Cara Dillon handles the office in Tulsa.