Fewer Operators, Lower Volumes in View for the Prolific Permian

The $100-billion-plus wave of oil industry consolidation that swept through the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeast New Mexico in the second half of 2023 may have crested but is still showing momentum that will likely result in more deals over the remainder of this year. Need evidence? Look to February’s $50-billion combination of Diamondback Energy and rival Endeavor Energy Resources. Endeavor began as a green-shoot sole-proprietorship in 1979 to drill its first well in Midland County, Texas. By 2016, the private company had transitioned into one of the region’s top horizontal well operators—completing over 1,100 gross operated horizontal wells and producing more than 400,000 gross operated barrels of oil equivalent per day at the time of the Diamondback deal. The Diamondback/Endeavor marriage was the side salad in an otherwise grand buffet of deals that ran roughshod through the region over the past several months. Last October, ExxonMobil cut a deal to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources for around $60 billion. Chevron followed suit with its $53-billion deal to acquire rival Hess. Other smaller, but notable deals included Permian Resources’ $4.5-billion bid for Earthstone Energy, Canada’s Ovintiv’s $4.3-billion offering on a trio of regional deals, and Civitas Resources snapping up private-equity-led Tap Rock Resources and Hibernia Energy III for a combined $4.7 billion. The lion’s share of the larger deals is characterized by players with more-predominant international footprints snapping up more-focused producers in an area of established crude oil production. When deals like this occur, not only are you taking two potential drilling programs and making them one, but you are also bringing these assets into a situation of heightened competition for budget dollars due to the acquiring company’s other financial requirements. This is expected to result in less drilling and, as a result, less production coming from the prolific Permian over the course of the next several months. “We do have production growth from the Permian slowing to about 400,000 B/D in 2024 from 500,000 in 2023 and 600,000 in 2022,” said Andrew Dittmar, analyst with Enverus. “It’s hard to draw a direct correlation to the consolidation of private E&Ps, but in my view that is playing a role. There has been over $100 billion in private sales in the Permian since 2021. Privates are far more likely to target double-digit production growth versus publics managing for flat production or low single-digit growth. Privates are especially likely to ramp up production immediately before going to market to garner a higher sales price, so the wave of privates gearing up to sell then transacting was a tailwind for Permian volumes,” Dittmar said. He noted that moving forward, this will have a diminished effect since there are limited large private entities left to merge in the Permian region. The likelihood of public-public mergers, such as ExxonMobil acquiring Pioneer or APA purchasing Callon Petroleum, having a significant impact is lower, as these companies were already operating with a focus on minimal growth in their assets.