The firm
Petro Capital Group, Dallas, founded 2002
Growth capital for privately held companies in oil, gas and oilfield services. This page describes what the firm does and how its founder works. It does not describe any transaction, any company, or any result.
- NamePetro Capital Group
- Founded2002, Dallas, Texas
- FounderRosser Newton, managing partner
- SectorsOil and gas; oilfield services
- What it providesGrowth capital to privately held companies
- GovernanceAn investment committee for the firm's funds, on which the founder sits
What the firm does
A privately held energy company reaches a point where one thing holds it back: a credit line that has stopped growing, a fleet it cannot fund, a second yard, or a finance function that has fallen behind the field. Petro Capital Group supplies the money that removes that one obstacle, and then it stays. Its founder describes the job as four verbs: find, weigh, help, and sell.
How its founder works
The method has held since 2002. The firm sits on the board, stays there until it sells, and expects to know the business well enough to be useful when a hard question comes up. That last part is a standard, not a slogan. A director who has never walked the yard, read the customer contract, or asked where the cash sits between invoice and deposit is a director who gets surprised by things that were visible all along.
Long horizons follow from that. A company whose board is looking two quarters ahead makes different decisions from one whose board is looking five years ahead, and the firm's founder has written at length, on this site's essays, about which of those decisions matter most in a downturn.
What this page will not tell you
There are no figures on this page about the funds, their results or their history, no list of companies, and no description of the kind of business the firm would like to hear from. That is deliberate. A firm page that reads as a pitch belongs on a firm's own site, and this is a personal one. Readers who want to understand how its founder thinks about capital, boards and the cycle will get further from the writing than from any summary here.