Two things happen when you invest in one of our projects. Wells that are already pumping start sending you money, usually within the first few months. And the drilling side of the same project gives you a deduction in the tax year you write the check.
Most people have never seen how this actually works, because oil and gas investing has spent forty years behind institutional doors. This page explains it in plain English — the structure, the money, the tax treatment, and the parts that can go wrong.
Every project has two halves
This is the part that makes a boutique project different from almost everything else you will be shown. Your capital is not doing one job. It is doing two, at the same time, on purpose.
Part A — wells that are already producing
A portion of the raise buys a working interest in wells that are pumping oil and gas today. Not a prospect. Not a permit. Wells with a production history you can look at before you commit.
Because those wells are already selling into a pipeline or a truck, distributions start from the outset of the project rather than after a two-year drilling program. This is the part people call mailbox money. It is the reason a boutique project can pay you while the rest of it is still being built.
Part B — new drilling and development
The rest goes into new drilling, recompletions, or bringing a shut-in well back online. This is the half with the upside — and it is the half that carries the tax treatment, because the money spent putting a hole in the ground is treated very differently from money spent buying an asset.
Run together, the two halves do something neither does alone: income while you wait, and a deduction in the year you invest.
The tax treatment explained
Congress has spent a century writing incentives into the tax code to keep oil and gas being produced domestically. Those incentives are not loopholes and they are not new — they are among the oldest deductions in the code, and they are available to individuals, not just to companies.
Intangible drilling costs (IDCs)
The majority of what it costs to drill a well is not the steel and the pump. It is labor, fuel, drilling fluid, rig time — costs with no salvage value. The tax code lets those be deducted in the year they are incurred, and in a typical project they run up to around 80% of the drilling portion of your investment.
Practically, that means a meaningful share of what you put in can come back against your current-year income rather than being depreciated out over a decade. For someone facing an unusually heavy tax year — a business sale, a large bonus, a liquidity event — the timing is often the entire point.
The depletion allowance
Once a well produces, a portion of the income it sends you is sheltered each year to reflect the reserve being used up. So the deduction is not only a first-year event; it continues, in a smaller way, for as long as the well produces.
How much of this applies to you depends entirely on your own situation — your income, your other holdings, whether you are a passive or active participant. We are not your tax advisor and this page is not tax advice. Bring it to your CPA before you decide anything. Most of the investors we work with do exactly that, and we are happy to talk to them directly.
What “boutique” means
Most energy investment sold to individuals is a fund. You wire money into a pool, the pool buys interests in wells chosen later, and you receive a statement. You will likely never know the name of a single well you own.
A boutique project is the opposite. It is small — historically raises from $600,000 to $25 million — and it is specific. You know the wells. You know the operator. You know which county they are in. You can drive out and stand on the lease, and some of our partners have.
Smaller also means a single well matters more, in both directions. That is a real trade and we would rather you understand it going in than discover it in month four.
What you get after you invest
- Monthly distributions from the producing side, paid as the operators settle.
- A partner portal with your position, your documents and your project’s reporting.
- Monthly production on every well — published, in public, including the months a well is shut in or down for a workover.
- A K-1 each year for the deductions above.
That third one is worth pausing on, because it is unusual. Most operators report to their investors quarterly, privately, and only when the news is good. We publish every well’s monthly production on this website where anyone can read it — a well that got shut in sits on the page next to a well that had a good month.
Go look at the wells before you talk to us →
What can go wrong
Anyone who tells you this is safe is selling you something. Here is the honest version, and you can verify every example on our own well pages.
- Wells go down. One of ours has been shut in since February while the operator works out a near-wellbore blockage. It has reported zero for months. It is on the site, with the explanation.
- Some wells never come back. A recompletion we were waiting on didn’t work; the well was plugged and abandoned. Its final row is on the site too.
- Timelines slip. Rigs are scheduled and then rescheduled. A re-completion planned for “the next week or two” can take a quarter.
- Prices move. Your distributions track the price of oil and gas, and neither asks your permission.
- It is illiquid. There is no exchange to sell your interest on. Capital committed to a project stays committed for the life of the project.
The structure is built for this. Part A is meant to be producing while Part B is still uncertain, which is why the two halves run together rather than one after the other.
Who you would be doing this with
Cruciform Properties is a third-generation, family-owned exploration and production company in College Station, Texas. Kyle Long, our president, has spent more than two decades in the Gulf Coast and has been involved in over 200 wells drilled. It is a small company, and the people who answer the phone are the people making the decisions.
That matters more than it sounds. In a boutique project you are not buying a brand. You are buying an operator’s judgment about which wells are worth the money.
How to start
1. Pick a time with Kyle. Thirty minutes on Google Meet, booked straight into his calendar — no materials required. He will ask what you are trying to accomplish and tell you honestly whether this fits. Plenty of these calls end with “this isn’t for you,” and that is a fine outcome.
2. If there is a fit, you see a real project. Specific wells, specific operators, the structure, the economics, and what the reporting will look like.
3. Documents and funding. Investments in these projects are limited to accredited investors, so there is a verification step before anything is signed.
This page is educational and describes how boutique oil and gas projects are generally structured. It is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, and it is not tax, legal or investment advice. Production figures shown elsewhere on this site are as reported by the operator of record; past production is not a prediction of future results. Any investment would be made only through definitive offering documents, only by investors who qualify, and involves substantial risk including the loss of the entire amount invested. Consult your own tax and legal advisors.