Three Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today; WTI Breaks Below $80 -- Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Locator: 44418B.

Avian flu: link here. But let's keep "using" the price of eggs as the reason we need to fight inflation.  Along with the price of used cars. 

[By the way, eggs are now back to their "normal" pricing at our local Target store. A regional grocer in our area still charges almost double, blaming avian flu -- but obviously taking advantage of the situation.]

[I wonder how Costco is managing the avian flu issue?] But I digress.

 
WTI: $79.19. Again, predicting the price of oil is a fool's errand: link here.

NOG: press release. 1Q23 hedging results and capital allocation.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 45.

Peter Zeihan newsletter.

WTI: $79.19. [Again, predicting the price of oil is a fool's errand.]

Natural gas: $2.289.

Thursday, April 20, 2023: 37 for the month; 37 for the quarter, 292 for the year
38869, conf, Lime Rock Resources, Neal 4-33-28H-144-95,
37475, conf, Petro-Hunt, Watterud 160-95-14B-23-3H,

Wednesday, April 19, 2023: 35 for the month; 35 for the quarter, 290 for the year
38868, conf, Lime Rock Resources, Twist 4-4-9H-143-95,
38373, conf, Oasis, Rey Federal 5201 32-11 4B,
37476, conf, Petro-Hunt, Watterud 160-95-14B-23-1HS, 

RBN Energy: will another big-money deal that XOM to #1 in the Permian?

For a major oil and gas producer, organic growth over time is all well and good. But if you want next-level scale — and the economies that come with it — there’s nothing like cannon-balling into the deep end of the pool with a huge, game-changing acquisition. ExxonMobil has already done that twice — first in 2010 with the $41 billion purchase of XTO Energy, then in 2017 when it bought the Bass family’s oil and gas assets for $6.6 billion. Now it’s said to be poised for another big plunge, and to be eyeing the Permian’s largest E&P, Pioneer Natural Resources. In today’s RBN blog, we analyze a potential deal that would make Exxon the dominant producer in the premier U.S. shale play.

A little history about Exxon and the Permian may be helpful here. In the early 2000s, Exxon was focused primarily on overseas operations, but the onset of the Shale Revolution in the late 2000s convinced the company of the potentially strong production growth offered by U.S. unconventional assets. Its options for entering the shale space were building a business organically over a decade or acquiring an established company to jump-start its expansion. An obvious target was XTO Energy, which since its formation in 1986 as Cross Timbers Oil — a name that later morphed into XTO — had built an impressive portfolio of unconventional natural gas assets across several U.S. plays, including the Barnett Shale, the Haynesville and the Marcellus. Seeing the investment as a springboard to shale development across the U.S. and maybe elsewhere, Exxon bought XTO for $41 billion — $30 billion in stock and the assumption of more than $10 billion in debt — its largest deal since the merger with Mobil Inc. in 1999.