Past Recipients - 38 by 38 - Purdue University

Colin McGonagill is a fourth-generation oil and gas worker and CEO of McGonagill and Bay Exploration (MBX), whose mission is to reduce the absolute cost of energy to create demand in previously priced-out markets. MBX applies underutilized physical principles, such as fluid dynamics and heat transfer, to underappreciated geologic reservoirs. He found and developed a shallow tight carbonate concept in the early development cycle of the Permian Basin, and he was one of the first to advocate for lateral length normalizations when valuing horizontal wells.

He has "been at the tip of the sword in finding and developing new oil plays in the United States," with much of his attention devoted to developing the Delaware and Midland Basins, two of the country's most prolific basins for energy production. Before starting his business, he was a senior petroleum engineer for QStar, which in 2016 was acquired by SM Energy for $1.6B. The company returned more than $1B to shareholders, and their concepts have added several hundred million barrels in place of PDP reserves (once drilled by SM Energy) to the U.S. economy. He was fortunate to have an equity stake in QStar, eventually using his profits to purchase new properties at $30/barrel, drilling and completing wells as oil costs rose to roughly $100/barrel. The MBX team then leveraged that deal into new relationships and opportunities and is now bidding on projects in the $500M+ range. MBX recently purchased 22,500 Gross Acres from Chevron in the Delaware Basin, and in September 2024 closed on $40M of growth drilling capital from a private commodities firm based in the UK.

"Purdue taught me to never give up, even when you think you're failing," McGonagill said. "Success is mostly determination to find a better way to do things."