Greatest Bull Market In History? Goldilocks Economy? Devon/Williston -- RBN Energy -- July 16, 2024

Locator: 48149B.

Market: yesterday -- truly amazing, and CNBC did an incredibly lousy job keeping folks up to date yesterday -- three examples: CAT, BRK-B, and BK.

Assassination attempt: folks are missing the most important observation. Oh, yes, it's mentioned in passing ....

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: trending toward $80. Oh-oh. Peak driving season. Hurricane season. Record air travel.

Wednesday, July 17, 2024: 31 for the month; 31 for the quarter, 357 for the year
40405, conf, CLR, Chase 5-18H,

Tuesday, July 16, 2024: 30 for the month; 30 for the quarter, 356 for the year
40430, conf, Neptune Operating, Gustafson 5-8 5H,
39637, conf, Hess, TI-State-158-95-3635H-3,

RBN Energy: after a good bit of tire-kicking, Devon Energy finally finds "the one." Archived.

There’s been a frenetic scramble among oil and gas producers through the early 2020s to acquire top-tier acreage and production assets they think they will need to survive and thrive. Some of those acquisitions are still being done through smaller deals such as acreage swaps, but the expansion mode of choice for most has been big-time M&A, which in a single multibillion-dollar deal can add years to a company’s inventory life or perhaps give it a stronger foothold in a key production region or two. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss Devon Energy’s recently announced $5 billion acquisition of Grayson Mill Energy, yet another private-equity-backed E&P cashing in on the smart moves it has been making. 

Over the past few years, executives at large U.S. oil and gas producers have put a lot of effort into increasing their company’s scale, improving cost efficiency and boosting shareholder returns. For many — almost all, it seems — that work resulted in either acquiring another E&P or becoming the acquiree.

A comprehensive list would fill half a blog, but prime, 10- or 11-figure examples include Chevron buying Hess Corp., Occidental Petroleum purchasing CrownRock, Chesapeake Energy acquiring Southwestern Energy, and Diamondback Energy snapping up Endeavor Energy Resources. (And don’t forget the case of Permian pure-play Pioneer Natural Resources, which in 2021 bought Parsley Energy for $4.5 billion and DoublePoint Energy for $6.4 billion, only to be acquired itself by ExxonMobil in May for a cool $60 billion.)