John P. Jurrius
Chief Executive Officer, President
John Jurrius (b. 1960) has spent the majority of his professional career working in the energy sector. Mr. Jurrius has spent the past 20 years developing energy projects and providing financial solutions in Indian Country. In 1986, Mr. Jurrius began developing natural gas properties located on the Southern Ute Indian reservation. In 1992, Mr. Jurrius began partnering directly with the Southern Ute Tribe to facilitate acquisitions on behalf of Red Willow Production Company, the Southern Ute's production company. In 1994, Mr. Jurrius entered into a joint venture with a major merchant banker to facilitate joint ventures between financial investors and the Southern Ute Tribe. After leading the groups to approximately $100 MM of merger and acquisition investments in up-stream and mid-stream assets, Mr. Jurrius was asked to take a position as "Financial Advisor" to the Southern Ute Tribal Council in 1996, where he served until 2001. As advisor to the Tribal Council, Mr. Jurrius was responsible for the overall management of the Tribe's financial resources, evaluation of energy transactions and the development and implementation of a comprehensive "Financial Plan" for the Tribe. Mr. Jurrius' work for the Tribe led to the formation of the Tribe's "Growth Fund," where he served as the financial director. Mr. Jurrius' significant accomplishments include the Tribe's acquisition of Red Cedar Gathering Company; McKenzie Methane Corporation, the cornerstone of Red Willow's producing properties; securing the Tribes first non-Reservation direct asset investment in Contango Oil and Gas Company, and the successful implementation of the Tribe's Financial Plan and associated AAA credit ratings from Fitch and Moody's rating agencies. These efforts led to the generation of hundreds of millions of dollars of new long-term commercial revenue for the Tribe and its energy companies.
In 1999 and 2000, Mr. Jurrius was introduced to the Ute Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation by the Southern Ute Tribe. In 2000, Mr. Jurrius entered into a Financial Advisor contract with Ute Tribe of Utah. Again, Mr. Jurrius was tasked with developing and implementing a long-term Financial Plan for the Tribe and the overall management of the Tribe's energy and natural resource estate. At the inception of this engagement, the Tribe had no commercial ownership interest in energy and resource activities on its Reservation. Today, the Tribe has an energy company with a working interest in nine active drilling programs on 400,000 acres of Tribal land, ownership in over 200 miles of gas gathering and transportation assets, and ownership in Utah's largest gas processing plant. Mr. Jurrius served as CEO and President of the Tribe's Energy Company until early 2008 when he formed Native American Resource Partners.
Lynn D. Becker
Vice President
Lynn D. Becker is a co-founder of NARP. His background spans more than 30 years in the oil and gas industry -- including seven years in Indian Country -- with extensive experience in acquisitions, divestitures, project management and land operations. Over the course of his career, which began at Mobil Oil, he has closed several billion dollars worth of transactions and worked on a variety of environmental issues. Mr. Becker was involved in the early successes of Westport Oil & Gas and EnCana Oil & Gas. He is a former Certified Professional Landman with the American Association of Professional Landmen. Together with Mr. Jurrius, Mr. Becker worked in collaboration with several federal agencies on various aspects of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, including Section 1813 right-of-way issues and drafting the Tribal Energy Resource Agreement regulations and associated websites.
For the past six years, Mr. Becker served as director of the Energy & Minerals Department of the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah, where he assisted Mr. Jurrius in the creation of the Tribe's energy company, Ute Energy LLC, and several related energy entities.
Todd A. Fisher
Vice President
Prior to joining Native American Resource Partners shortly after the company's formation in 2008, Mr. Fisher spent 15 years practicing tax law in the private sector, working for two large law firms and then in-house for Amoco Corporation, emphasizing oil and gas/energy/tax practice. At Amoco, he closed $5 billion in transactions and personally added over $100 million in quantifiable value to the corporation's tax position. Much of his work during these years directly involved Indian Tribes.
In 2000, after leaving law practice, Mr. Fisher joined Mr. Jurrius, as a financial consultant to several Indian Tribes, assisting them in developing long-term Financial Plans and actively deploying their mineral and surface estates. Mr. Fisher worked with Mr. Jurrius through 2002, after which he served as President and CEO of a tax technology company that he had co-founded earlier. From 2004 until joining NARP, Mr. Fisher was a private real estate and oil and gas investor.
