Homegrown - EOG's Focus on Organic Growth Stands Out Amid E&P Consolidation Wave

As U.S. E&Ps deal with a slew of shorter-term challenges such as broken supply chains, labor shortages, and infrastructure constraints, they’re also paying increasing attention to a longer-term concern: “inventory exhaustion.” There is a growing chorus of analysts asserting that oil and gas producers’ inventory of top-tier drilling locations has been significantly depleted as the nation’s major unconventional resource plays mature. Many producers have continued to rein in their capital spending and husband their current resources and several have boosted inventories through bolt-on acquisitions. Premier E&P EOG Resources has taken a different approach, emphasizing organic exploration that has led to the discovery of two new significant plays over the past two years, including the recent announcement of a new Utica Shale combo play that it describes as being “almost reminiscent” of the early Delaware Basin. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss EOG’s dramatically different approach to building inventory and dive into the details of its new Utica discovery.

There’s been a surge in E&P interest in the Utica Shale’s volatile oil window the past couple of years, and EOG Resources has been particularly optimistic about its potential for producing large volumes of condensate, the lightest of superlight crude oils. A few days ago, EOG — known for growing its business organically, not via M&A — announced one of the largest acquisitions of the year so far: the planned purchase of Encino Acquisition Partners (EAP), the Utica’s #1 condensate producer by far, for $5.6 billion, including the assumption of EAP’s debt. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, the deal will give EOG its third “foundational” focus area (the others are the Eagle Ford and the Permian's Delaware Basin) and supports the view that the Utica really is an up-and-comer. 

The term “exploration and production company” has been widely used for only four or five decades, but the activities it represents have a history that dates back to the first oil well drilled by Edwin Drake in Titusville, PA, in 1859. Ever since that world-changing event, discovering and developing new sources of oil and gas has remained the industry’s passion, exemplified by wildcatters and, more recently, by the technological wizards of the Shale Revolution. To this day, every major public upstream company still invests in finding and developing reserves — except one. In today’s RBN blog, we examine the unique approach taken by Diversified Energy Co., which has grown substantially by ignoring the “E” part of E&P.