It’s All About the Permian – How the Basin Totally Dominates U.S. Crude Production

The Shale Revolution that unlocked vast, low-cost oil and gas reserves, resulting in soaring production that transformed the U.S. from a major oil and natural gas importer to a rising exporter, was supposed to usher in a “Golden Age” for exploration and production firms (E&Ps). Instead, investors have increasingly abandoned energy equities, sending the S&P E&P stock index to an all-time low. The index closed at 3,272 on August 16, 2019, or about 75% lower than the all-time high of about 12,500 in mid-2014 and 46% lower than a year ago. And the stock prices of three-fourths of the big, publicly traded E&Ps have hit record lows over the last month. This energy-equities bloodbath would seem to indicate that the E&P industry is on the verge of financial meltdown. However, the just-released second-quarter 2019 results from the 44 U.S. E&Ps we track suggest that’s not entirely the case. Lower commodity prices certainly tightened the screws on the bunch, particularly companies that focus on gas production, but oil-weighted companies managed to eke out profit and cash-flow gains. Today, we provide an in-depth analysis of second-quarter earnings for oil-weighted, gas-weighted and diversified producers.

Times are tough in the methanol market. Posted and spot prices for methanol have continued falling (to levels not seen since 2010). New methanol capacity, planned during the good ol’ days, has been coming online, further depressing prices. And while more methanol-to-olefins (MTO) plants are starting up in China—the product’s biggest market—they are running at far less than full speed. But one bright spot for U.S. methanol producers is dirt-cheap natural gas, providing U.S. plants a competitive advantage versus those in the rest of the world. Today, we examine recent developments in the methanol market and consider what may be coming next.

<p>(Note: Each column is sortable by clicking once or twice on the column title. For example, clicking on "Total" will
rank the companies either low-to-high or high-to-low.)</p>