Grant Sykes
Grant co-founded Blackjack in 2025 and serves as EVP, Operations. Prior to founding Blackjack, Grant served as VP, Operations with 89 Energy where he led all production and completions operations for the company.
While at 89 Energy, Grant led a team of field production and completions personnel and managed all of 89 Energy III’s stimulations, materials logistics, workovers, drillouts, AFL installs and TIL operations. Prior to 89 Energy, Grant served as Completion Manager at Native Exploration where he assisted the team in understanding recent well performance and historical induced seismicity. Grant started his career with EOG Resources and served primarily as a completions operations engineer – designing, planning and leading over 200 modern horizontal slickwater stimulations and drillouts across multiple onshore US basins. Grant was appointed as Woodford Team Lead in 2018, leading an interdisciplinary team developing EOG’s Eastern Anadarko position with 2 to 4 drilling rigs while continuing to serve in an operations role. Grant received a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University and an MBA from the University of Oklahoma.