Diamondback

We defy you to name an oil and gas producer that’s been on the buying side of more $1-billion-plus M&A than Permian pure play Diamondback Energy, which announced February 18 that it had agreed to purchase a chunk of Midland Basin assets from Double Eagle IV, one of the Permian’s largest privately held producers, for just under $4.1 billion. You’d be equally hard-pressed to find a team that’s assembled and flipped more Permian acreage and production than the folks at Double Eagle. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the newly announced Diamondback/Double Eagle IV deal and what it gives Diamondback, the fourth-largest producer in the Permian after ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum. 

A Super Bowl game (and halftime show) for the ages followed up only hours later by a made-in-heaven combination of two of the largest, most admired E&Ps in the super-hot Permian? It doesn’t get any better than this, unless you’re a Taylor Swift fan too — in which case, it may be impossible for you to “shake it off.” In today’s RBN blog, we examine the newly announced plan by Diamondback Energy and Endeavor Energy Resources to combine into a Travis Kelce-sized Permian pure play with more than 800 Mboe/d of crude oil-focused production and more than 6,000 well locations with breakevens of $40/bbl or less. 

“Top-tier rock, massive scale, and ever-improving efficiency” — that’s the mantra of the largest publicly held E&Ps in the Permian, many of which have only added to their heft during the pandemic/post-pandemic era by acquiring complementary production and midstream assets from private equity funds and old-time oil-and-gas families. Yes, it’s either/or time in the U.S.’s leading oil and gas basin: Either you get bigger, high-grade the acreage you control and supercharge your free cash flow (and your stock buybacks and dividends) or you accept your fate as an also-ran or, if you’re lucky, an acquisition target. Just last week, Matador Resources announced a $1.6 billion deal to acquire Advance Energy Partners, which will boost Matador’s Delaware Basin output by 25% and give it a foothold in the Permian’s big-boy league. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss this and other recent asset acquisitions in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico and what they say about the Permian’s future.

Battered by a flood of new supply and limited pipeline takeaway capacity, prices for Permian natural gas and crude oil have spent a lot of time in the valley over the past 18 months. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices at the Permian’s Midland Hub traded as much as $20/bbl less than similar quality crude in Houston last year. That’s a big oil-price haircut that producers have had to absorb while ramping up production. However, the collapse in the Permian crude oil differential was tame compared to what happened with Permian natural gas prices. Prices at the Waha Hub in West Texas traded as low as negative $5/MMBtu, a gaping $8/MMBtu discount to benchmark Henry Hub in Louisiana. As bad as that all was, new pipeline takeaway capacity has arrived, and Permian prices are beginning to claw their way out of the depths. Today, we look at how new pipelines are impacting the prices received for Permian natural gas and oil.