Every classic stand-up comic has it. It’s standard issue for master jazz drummers. Without it, Gretzky and Mario Lemieux would’ve been pluggers.

You can’t buy it, or beg it. It’s bred in the bone. It’s timing — exquisite, dead-solid-perfect timing.

And it’s a primary reason three 40-ish golfing buddies have been smiling since the price of natural gas put the pedal to the metal.

They connected with escalating prices like expert surfers catching a wave.

Five years ago, oilpatch vets Doug Dafoe, Terry Meek and Dave Barlow tossed $200,000 into a hat to start their own oil and gas venture, Thunder Energy Inc. Today, their accountants project a 2001 cash flow of $50-$60 million.

“The timing was pretty good,” understated Meek, a well-known Calgary curler and Woody Harrelson lookalike.

“We saw gas prices increasing down the road — but never to this level. At that time, I think gas was trading around $1.50-$2 (a gigajoule), and there looked like there’d be an upside down the road.”

Some upside. Some road.

Last time we checked, Canadian natural gas was trading in the $10-$11 range, and most analysts expect the tide to remain high for another year or two, anyway.

Nice to know some smaller players — not just fat-cat conglomerates — are reaping the rewards.

In Thunder’s case, they’re deserved. This is a straightforward matter of prescience — and pinpoint timing — paying off.

The founders brought an ideal personal and professional synergy to the mix. Dafoe, Thunder’s president, had a strong background in oilpatch corporate development. Engineer Meek had worked in reservoir exploitation and drilling completions, before hiring out as a consultant. And Barlow was a geologist who missed getting his fingernails dirty, after drifting into supervisory jobs within the industry.

Meanwhile, their initial strategy worked so well it’s never been abandoned.

“The idea was to go into a property that had been worked over once by a larger company,” Meek explained. “To go back in, and look for (overlooked pools of gas and oil), now that the original owner had already put an infrastructure in place.”

Added Dafoe: “Our joke was, you had to be able to drive to the (property) from Calgary in less than a day. If we bought into an area already equipped with process capacity, and pipelines, we could get cash flow right away.”

The game plan unfolded like a dream. With a partner’s help, the company bought into two existing gas plants at Rosalind, north of Stettler.

Soon, Rosalind was in production. And 15 months after start-up, the three caballeros went public, raising $1.5 million, mainly from friends and industry contacts. They were already big enough to leapfrog the then-Alberta Stock Exchange, and list on the TSE.

Today, when they talk about Rosalind, the eyes of the founders grow misty. Purchased from Crestar Energy, Rosalind was perfect.

As geologist Barlow put it, Thunder looked at the property “with fresh eyes — there were a lot of overlooked things we identified. Wells already drilled, uphole zones that were available, and two underutilized gas plants.”

Rosalind supplied a paradigm for the three properties subsequently added by the company, which produces gas and oil at a 65/35 ratio.

So, thanks to the lessons taught by Rosalind, everything’s rosy in Thundertown. Except for that damn TSE share price — lolligagging below the $3 mark.

“It’s a mystery to all of us,” griped Dafoe. “We’re into a period of plus-$10 gas markets, and still no interest from the capital markets.

“Capital has been diverted into the new economy, e-business, or whatever. And there’s only so much capital in the world,” he said.

However, with cash flowing, and a debt-reduction plan that’s well ahead of schedule, Dafoe refuses to believe investors will ignore solid juniors like Thunder for long.

Here’s his take. “With continued high prices, the cash flow of the bigger (petroleum) companies is gonna explode. Next year, there’ll be all kinds of cash in this industry, looking for opportunities,” Dafoe theorized.

“If companies such as ours remain undervalued . . . that will drive more (investor) interest to buy undervalued share openings, and at least drive stock prices back up to where they reflect the asset values of the companies.”

If things shake down that way for Thunder Energy, three caballeros will say life ain’t nothin’ but a gas.