WTI In Free Fall? Not So Fast. Chillax. Stay calm. Keep On Frackin" -- November 4, 2021

ISO NE, link here: spikes to $94. Now $96 in New Hampshire.

WTI: $82.35

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$82.35	11/4/2021	11/04/2020	11/04/2019	11/04/2018	11/04/2017
Active Rigs	32	13	56	66	55

One well coming off the confidential list -- Thursday, November 4, 2021: 4 for the month, 7 for the quarter, 258 for the year:

• 36068, conf, Enerplus, Rhyolite 147-93-09C-04H-TF, 

RBN Energy: midstreamers joining forces to optimize gathering and processing. 

The U.S. oil and gas industry’s upstream sector has seen more than its share of mergers and acquisitions in the year and a half since COVID-19 put energy markets on a wild roller coaster. ConocoPhillips buying Concho Resources and then Shell’s Permian assets. Chevron snapping up Noble Energy. Pioneer Natural Resources acquiring Parsley Energy. And yesterday’s big news: Continental Resources’ planned purchase of Pioneer’s assets in the Permian’s Delaware Basin. It’s not just hydrocarbon producers that are consolidating and expanding, however. There’s also been a flurry of large-scale M&A activity in the midstream sector, mostly involving oil and gas gatherers in the Permian and the Bakken — the nation’s two largest crude oil-focused basins. What’s driving these combinations? In today’s RBN blog, we begin a review of recent, major pipeline-company combinations and the benefits participants expect to realize from them.

The massive energy-industry dislocations caused by the pandemic forced every upstream, midstream, and downstream player to consider what it all meant for them and what they could and should do to weather the storm. A common theme emerged: management needed to delay or even jettison their plans for growth and instead focus on efficiency by cutting costs, seeking out opportunities to streamline and optimize their operations, and working to maximize the revenue from every molecule. In that blog, we discussed a prime example of this push for efficiency: the plan by Plains All American and Oryx Midstream to contribute assets to a new, Plains-operated crude oil pipeline joint venture in the heart of the Permian’s Delaware Basin.