production costs

Storm clouds may be gathering on the economic horizon as concerns about persistent inflation and looming recession roil markets and politics. But for oil and gas producers, the third quarter was the equivalent of a driver putting the top down under a flawless azure sky, dialing up the road tunes, and cruising without a care down an endless highway. Lower oil prices led to a dip in earnings and cash flow after a record-breaking second quarter, but cash still filled producers’ coffers at the second-highest rate in decades. In today’s RBN blog, we review the Q3 results of U.S. E&Ps and discuss what may lie ahead as those storm clouds move closer.

With a dwindling market for their crude, many U.S. producers are confronting an unavoidable choice: shutting in existing production. Just go out and flip a switch and turn a valve, right? Wrong. Like everything else in the COVID era, shutting in production is complicated. It is the alternative of last resort for producers, whose primary directive is the economic extraction of oil and gas. But with demand for their products crushed, production from some wells no longer makes economic sense. Unfortunately, the process of shutting in wells is charged with contractual, economic and operational issues that the industry is scrambling to deal with. The situation is fraught with uncertainty, and many producers’ futures depend on how decisively they manage the shut-in process. Today, we discuss the urgent need to reduce oil production and the judgments producers will be making as they take wells offline.

Permian producers led the U.S. exploration and production (E&P) sector’s remarkable recovery from the financial crisis that was spurred by the oil price crash in late 2014. Dramatically lower costs and higher well productivity led to strong margins even at $50/bbl oil and promised bountiful returns should oil prices move higher. It’s no surprise that investors flocked to the stocks of Permian-focused producers, driving equity valuations, as measured by enterprise value per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) of proved reserves, to multiples three or four times the industry average. Recently, however, there have been growing investor concerns that logistical constraints on shipping crude oil and gas out of the region could restrict cash flows, investment budgets and output growth, and on Friday, Baker Hughes reported that the Permian’s rig count was down (albeit by only four, to 476). Since May 15, stock prices of smaller pure-play Permian producers Concho Resources, Diamondback Energy, Parsley Energy, RSP Permian, and Laredo Petroleum have fallen 10-15%. One of the larger Permian producers has bucked the trend, though: Pioneer Natural Resources. Today, we explore the drivers of Pioneer’s current valuation and analyze the factors that could propel future growth.

After posting significant pretax operating losses in 2015-16, U.S. oil-weighted exploration and production companies returned to profitability in the first quarter of 2017. The 180-degree turnaround in peer group results was driven not only by higher oil prices, but by major strategic and operational shifts. Most of the 21 E&Ps we’ve been tracking responded to the plunge in revenue that started nearly three years ago by optimizing their portfolios, shedding properties with higher breakeven costs to focus on core unconventional plays and implementing operational efficiencies that led to sharply lower drilling and completion costs. Today we discuss how, with higher cash flows and profits, crude oil producers are ramping up their 2017 capital spending to generate long-term production growth.