PSX -- RBN Energy -- February 11, 2025

Locator: 48536B.

Lore. Link to Forbes.  

Breaking:

302's: FBI form. Link here.

Marc Fogel, detained in Russia, since 2021, has been released. Breaking: 12:41 p.m. CT, February 11, 2025.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $73.54.

New wells:

• Wednesday, February 12, 2025: 19 for the month, 65 for the quarter, 65 for the year, 
• 40852, conf, CLR, Taney 3-23H,
• 39956, conf, Hess, EN-Heinle-LE-156-94-2536H-1,
• 39952, conf, Hess, EN-Heinle-156-94-2536H-5,
• 39843, conf, CLR, Harms West Federal 8-32H,
• Tuesday, February 11, 2025: 15 for the month, 61 for the quarter, 61 for the year,
• 40842, conf, CLR, Catron 2-26H,

RBN Energy: a new drill down report on consolidation in the midstream sector. 

The U.S. energy industry’s midstream sector has experienced an extraordinary consolidation over the past few years. This undeniable trend has been driven by the widely held (and sensible) view that the winners in the industry’s next era will be the midstreamers with massive scale and the right assets in the best places. As evidenced by the extension of this buying spree into 2025, there’s still a lot more reshuffling to do. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss a few of the latest midstream deals in the Permian, the Eagle Ford and the Bakken, as well as highlights from our new Drill Down Report on midstream M&A. 

As we said in our last Drill Down Report on the topic (in late 2023), acquisitions in the upstream sector — by E&Ps plus major integrateds like ExxonMobil and Chevron — grab most of the headlines. But there’s also been a lot of M&A activity 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.

As in our report on midstream M&A in 2022-23, many of the midstream deals announced in 2024 and early 2025 involved the acquisition of companies with extensive holdings in the Permian, which is by far the U.S.’s top crude oil production area and also a major supplier of natural gas and NGLs. Rising Permian production over the past few years spurred a massive buildout of midstream infrastructure — including gathering systems (for crude, associated gas and produced water), gas processing plants, takeaway pipelines (for crude, natural gas and NGLs), storage facilities, fractionators, and export terminals. While a significant portion of that midstream development was undertaken by large publicly held companies or master limited partnerships (MLPs), many other vital projects were developed by privately held midstream companies backed by private equity. In the post-COVID era, with many publicly held companies looking to gain further scale and scope — and many private-equity-backed midstream companies looking to cash in on their well-timed, well-planned developments — it could be argued that conditions for large-scale midstream M&A have never been better.

For proof, consider five noteworthy deals announced so far in the new year — three by Plains All American and one each by Phillips 66 (P66) and Kinder Morgan. We’ll start with P66, which announced January 6 that it had reached an agreement to acquire EPIC NGL — or, more specifically, EPIC Y-Grade GP LLC and EPIC Y-Grade LP, two entities that own a set of significant NGL-related assets between the Permian and Texas’s Gulf Coast — for a total of $2.2 billion. The deal, which is expected to close later this year, will give P66:  to be continued tomorrow.