Four Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- October 24, 2023

Locator: 45810B.   

CVX: op-ed in WSJ. "Position 1" on the editorial page. I may post more of the op-ed later. For now:

Hess will increase Chevron’s footprint in the Gulf of Mexico and North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation. Texas’s Permian basin accounts for almost all of the U.S. oil supply growth over the past three years, but its production is expected to start tapering off by the end of this decade. Hess’s Bakken assets could then become more valuable.

But Hess’s most lucrative real estate may be off the coast of Guyana, where it holds a 30% share in an estimated 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas resources, which it is developing with Exxon and China’s Cnooc. That play currently produces 400,000 barrels a day and is expected to “deliver production growth into the next decade,” according to Chevron.

WTI: $85.90.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023: 59 for the month; 59 for the quarter, 629 for the year
None.

Tuesday, October 24, 2023: 59 for the month; 59 for the quarter, 629 for the year
39678, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Getzlaf 3-25-36-158N-101W-MBH, Little Muddy,
38092, conf, Enerplus, Baleen 148-93-05A-06H, McGregory Buttes,
37449, conf, Hess, EN-Abrahamson-LE-155-93-3019H-1, 
34221, conf, BR, Abercrombie 3-8-12 MBH, Elidah,

RBN Energy: midstream companies combining to gain scale, fill in asset gaps.

Ongoing M&A activity in the upstream portion of the oil and gas industry has garnered a lot of attention, most recently regarding ExxonMobil’s planned $64.5 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources. But there’s also been a lot of consolidation in the midstream space as the companies that gather, process, transport, store and export hydrocarbons seek to gain the scale, scope and synergies they think they will need to succeed in an increasingly competitive industry. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss highlights from our newly released Drill Down report on the major midstream deals of 2022 and 2023 to date. 

There are many reasons why large midstream companies might want to get bigger, either by acquiring smaller midstreamers or merging with near-equals. For many, buying another company and its set of assets gives the acquiring firm entrée to — or additional scale in — an important and/or growing production area or two. For others, an acquisition or merger enables them to provide the full range of well-to-consumer or well-to-water midstream services — say, gas processing plants, NGL pipelines to Mont Belvieu, fractionators and NGL export capacity.

It will surprise no one to hear that many of the midstream deals announced over the past couple of years involved the acquisition of companies with extensive holdings in the all-important Permian, which is by far the U.S.’s top crude oil production area and also a major supplier of natural gas and NGLs. Of course, the Permian has been a leading hydrocarbon supplier for decades, but constant improvements in horizontal drilling and well-completion techniques — not to mention an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the rock and resources below ground — since the mid-2010s has transformed the West Texas/southeastern New Mexico play into an unrivaled production powerhouse.