Executive Directors
Mark See - CEO & Chairman
Mark See has been the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company since 2012. He has over 30 years of experience in heavy civil, natural resources, and the E&P industries. He was the founder and CEO of Rock Well Petroleum, a private oil & gas company, until December 2008, and worked from then until October 2009. Mr. See was also President of Oil Recovery Enhancement LLC, a private oil company. He was selected as one of the top 25 Engineers in North America by the Engineering News-Record for his innovations in the petroleum industry. He is a graduate of the Mackay School of Mines at the University of Nevada at Reno, with a degree in Mining Engineering. He is a member of the Society of Mining Engineers and the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Bradley Sparks - CFO, Treasurer, & Director
Bradley Sparks currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of SORC and has been a director of the company since March 1, 2012. Before joining SORC, he was the Chief Executive Officer, President, and a Director of Visualant Inc. Prior to joining Visualant, he was the Chief Financial Officer of WatchGuard Technologies Inc. Before joining WatchGuard, he was the founder and managing director of Sunburst Growth Ventures LLC, a private investment firm specializing in emerging-growth companies. Previously, he founded Pointer Communications and served as Chief Financial Officer for several telecommunications and internet companies, including eSpire Communications Inc., Digex Inc., Omnipoint Corporation, and WAM!NET. He also served as Vice President and Treasurer of MCI Communications from 1988-1993 and as Vice President and Controller from 1993-1995. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Comrise. Mr. Sparks graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969 and is a former Army Captain. He has a Master of Science in Management from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a licensed CPA in Florida.
Independent Directors
Donald Beckham - Director
Donald Beckham has served as a director of the company since March 1, 2012. Since July 2015, he has been a partner with Copestone Energy Partners LLC. In 1993, he founded Beckham Resources Inc. (“BRI”), which, for over 30 years, has been a licensed, bonded, and insured operator in good standing with the Railroad Commission of Texas. Through BRI, Mr. Beckham has drilled and operated fields for his own account. His expertise is in the acquisition, exploitation, exploration, and production enhancement of mature oil and gas fields through which he has been able to enhance production by compressor optimization, pump design, work-over programs, stimulation techniques, and identifying new pay zones. Prior to BRI, Mr. Beckham was the chief operations manager for Houston Oil Fields Corporation (“HOFCO”), where he began his career. There, he was responsible for drilling, production, and field operations and managed approximately 100 people, including engineers, geologists, landmen, pumpers, and other contract personnel, as well as state and federal environmental and regulatory functions. He managed an annual capital budget of approximately $30 million and operated approximately 100 wells. HOFCO drilled about 20 wells per annum and performed approximately 30 recompletions and workover operations each year. HOFCO owned interests in about 10 key fields principally in Texas, and company-managed production was approximately 1,000 bpd of crude oil and 10 mm cfd of natural gas. Mr. Beckham is a petroleum engineer and a 1984 graduate of Mississippi State University.
Michael Price - Director
Michael Price has over 40 years of senior financial and petroleum experience in the global oil and gas industry. He has been a principal in Octagon Energy Advisors, a Houston-based energy investment advisory firm, since 2002. The firm advises financial institutions and institutional investors participating in energy investments. From 2008 through his retirement in 2021, he was a Managing Director at ING Capital, which provides debt financing to domestic exploration and production companies. From 1998 through 2002, Mr. Price was the Chief Financial Officer of Forman Petroleum Corporation. Before that, Mr. Price was Managing Director at Chase Manhattan Bank for 15 years and was in charge of technical support for Chase’s worldwide energy merchant banking activities. He worked as a consulting principal on domestic petroleum engineering and landowner matters in his early career. He gained extensive international experience working with major oil companies in various operating positions. He holds a BS and MS from Illinois Institute of Technology, an MBA from the University of Chicago, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and an MS in Petroleum Engineering from Tulane University.
Key Personnel
Chris Lindsey - General Counsel (acting)
Christopher E. Lindsey has practiced law for 32 years, both in law firms and in-house, and currently serves as outside General Counsel to the Company. From 2013 to 2021, he served as General Counsel, Chief Administrative Officer, and Secretary of Stranded Oil Resources Corporation (SORC). Over the course of his career prior to SORC, Chris has spent more than 15 years at law firms, both as (1) a partner for (a) Liskow & Lewis LLP, (b) Gordon Arata McCollam Duplantis & Eagan LLC, and (c) Burleson LLP, in each instance in the Houston office representing energy clients, and (d) Purrington Moody Weil LLP, in the Greensboro, NC office where he represented private equity and distressed debt funds and acted as outside general counsel for certain clients; and (2) an associate at Bracewell & Patterson LLP, in the Houston office where he was in the Real Estate, Energy, and Finance Section. Additionally, he served as General Counsel of Mariner Energy, LLC, from 1998 to 2000, and SalvageSale.com from 2000 to 2001. Chris graduated from the University of Virginia with a BA in Economics in 1988 and from the University of Texas with a JD from the School of Law in 1993, as well as an MBA from the McCombs School of Business in 2003.
Travis Leck - COO
Travis Leck serves as Chief Operating Officer of Stranded Oil Resources Corporation (SORC) and brings more than 25 years of experience in petroleum engineering, asset development, and large-scale field operations. He oversees all drilling, completions, and production activities and plays a central role in advancing SORC’s strategy to unlock stranded hydrocarbons and enhance recovery from mature, long-lived reservoirs. His leadership supports SORC’s deployment of its proprietary Underground Gravity Drainage™ (UGD) technology, a recovery method designed to economically capture oil that traditional techniques leave behind. Earlier in his career, Mr. Leck managed multi-state production operations, supervised well service and field crews, and held engineering roles supporting both conventional and secondary-recovery projects for companies including Saga Petroleum, Merit Energy Company, and Western Gas Resources. Mr. Leck started his career at Marathon Oil Company in Cody, Wyoming, focusing on mature fields and secondary recovery. He is a graduate of Montana Tech with a degree in Petroleum Engineering.
Nicholas Rausch - EVP, Business Development and Investor Relations
Nicholas Rausch has served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and Investor Relations at SORC since June of 2025. He has been advising the company since August 2022, bringing more than 25 years of diverse experience in financial services with a focus on startups and high-growth ventures. Before joining SORC, Mr. Rausch was President of Best Loans, LLC. He previously founded and served as a Series 65-qualified Principal Investment Advisor at Robotic Trading Advisors, and co-founded Robotic Trading Solutions, a pioneering software company that developed advanced automated stock trading technology for both professional and retail clients. Earlier in his career, he co-founded and managed MJM Capital, a boutique investment bank in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he specialized in opportunities across agriculture, natural resources, technology, and real estate. An experienced educator and public speaker, Mr. Rausch has taught investment, mortgage, and real estate courses in more than 65 cities across the United States and Canada. A Minnesota native, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications from Saint Cloud State University, majoring in Public Relations with a minor in Marketing. Outside of work, Nicholas enjoys spending time with his wife, Nicole, and their four children.
David Trabert - EVP, Geosciences
David Trabert serves as EVP of Geosciences at SORC. He has 30 years of experience as a geoscientist, having worked exploring for and developing precious and base metals deposits, and in the hydrocarbons industry in South and North America. He was Country Manager in Peru for Anglogold when it was the world’s largest gold mining company. In 2005, he worked as General Manager, Geosciences for Rockwell Petroleum, coordinating and participating with oil field evaluations and operations teams. He held the same position at Stranded Oil Resources Corporation (SORC), evaluating projects and designing and drilling 100% of the UGD wellbores drilled by the company. Mr. Trabert has dedicated more than 10 years to evaluating and developing UGD projects. In 1991, he graduated from the University of Washington with a BS in Geosciences, and in 1993, he received his Master’s Degree in Geology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Amol Bhavsar - VP of Reservoir Engineering
Amol Bhavsar serves as the VP of Reservoir Engineering for the Company, managing economic evaluations, SEC reserves estimation, operation and production data gathering, database design, water flood and UGD evaluation, and A&D ventures evaluations. He has more than 15 years of experience as a Petroleum Engineer in both conventional and un-conventional plays, including CONSOL Energy’s Business Planning and Budgeting group, overseeing Reservoir simulation Reserves and Economic analysis for company’s CBM and Shale assets; and Kinder Morgan CO2 Co. on the SACROC CO2 flood operations in Permian Basin, handing and supervising production optimization, ESP designs, workovers, stimulation, and CO2 flood optimization; and Enhance Oil Recovery Institute (EORI) in Casper, WY, where he managed the Unconventional Resources division. Mr. Bhavsar holds a BE in Petro-Chemical Engineering from M.I.T., India, and an MS in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering from West Virginia University.
Roger Smith - Health, Safety, & Environmental Manager
Roger Smith serves as the Health, Safety, and Environmental Manager for the Company. Mr. Smith has over 30 years of experience in his field related to drilling and responsibly harvesting natural resources. He has developed successful safety programs for commissioning unconventional gas fields and underground gravity drainage mines. He has contributed to both domestic and international projects in the areas of O&G exploration, production, gathering and compression, mineral exploration, industrial and municipal water supply, civil, and more. Mr. Smith has extensive experience navigating regulatory compliance with MSHA, OSHA, ATF, and DOT, and has been an MSHA above-ground and underground instructor since 1993 (blue card holder). His career began in 1986 with Alpha Omega Geotech, with moves to Layne Christensen, Stranded Oil Resources Corp., and Environmental Works Inc., before returning to SORC in 2025. Mr. Smith was educated at the University of Missouri Kansas City, graduating with a BS in Physical Geography with a minor in Geology in 1990.