Industry news

You need to read the article Martha posted about the profit margin on owning minerals and the reasons so many operators are jumping into buying minerals in their own leases.

Maybe behind a WSJ paywall, but good article showing how percentage of world surface suffering wildfires is actually declining. To be clear, not a climate denier, but the shrillness and outright hysteria in a lot of press reports makes my eyes glaze over. The strained tie ins to climate change for any type of news is making people desensitized to the issue, in my opinion.

The world is not on fire

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I don’t believe that the Oklahoma Production Revenue Standards Act would allow for such deductions.

This post is not legal, tax or investment advice. Reading or responding to this post does not create an attorney/client relationship.

SEC climate cudgel

It is still not too late to urge your congressional representatives to resist this SEC proposed climate disclosure rule submitted for public comment last spring. If adopted, the rule will impose staggering disclosure costs on all public companies, but especially all companies producing hydrocarbons upstream/midstream/downstream, the mandated disclosures will furnish environmentalists with a litigation cudgel to wield against energy companies.

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Matador claims success with u-turn wells located along Pecos River in Loving County TX where 3 counties Living, Reeves & Ward meet. Source 3Q23 earnings presentation slide 9.

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How much would the four individual wells cost to drill? $10 million seems like an incredible amount of savings.

Matador did not itemize cost savings in this 3Q23 webcast. The two horseshoe wells are 301-36189 JJ Wheat 2021H, and 301-36226 JJ Wheat 2034H. Matador has not uploaded completion reports to TRRC so I don’t know vertical depth. These are probably upper Wolfcamp, which is 10,900’ deep there by Pecos River. In 1Q23, Matador said 2 horseshoe wells instead of 4 lateral wells eliminates drilling & casing 2 vertical wellbores. I assume eliminating two 10,900’ vertical shafts saves steel/concrete casing of 21,000 (+) of vertical wellbore. Matador said in a webcast that the U-turn more gradual than the “heel” curve when a vertical shaft turns horizontal, it simply looks radical in diagrams.

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I wonder if a “serpentine” well with several “U” segments might be next?

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Matador reported 2100-2400 BOED on their horseshoe shaped laterals.

Mr. Ed would be proud

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Want to know why Waha continues to get overwhelmed with gas supply? Associated gas production in the Permian has tripled since 2018.

EIA article

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Good article. Permian gas/oil ratio rose from 2.1 to 3.1 last five years. Wonder if GOR increase is because operators ceased routine flaring/venting, or maybe the best wells have been drilled?

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Permian consolidation continues as Oxy acquires CrownRock aka CrownQuest. 14 remaining top Permian producers, only two big private companies remain, source Permain Resources earnings deck slide 10 3q23.
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Newest trick from pipeline operators to watch for. They negotiate a permanent easement but then argue part of the payment is for immediate damages and therefore 1099-MISC and taxed as ordinary income instead of capital gains. Head this off in negotiating your easements.

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Price curve (strip), contango & backwardation explained … oil options/futures thinly traded these days resulting in volatility detached from fundamentals. Pioneer paper 1/5/23 concluded “Futures Curve is Poor Oil Price Predictor”, Morgan Downey’s book “Oil 101” explains the basics. Contango is fairly unusual historically.

Hart article about “The Great Lithium Rush”. Unfortunately it is behind a paywall, but East Texas people can attest that there is a lot of speculative leasing out there. A lot of options and flippers active.

Your salt water may be worth something

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Apache is buying Callon in an all stock deal. Not a lot of overlap in their acreage footprint, so is likely to give Apache more oil window drilling sites.

Consolidation continues

Speaking of Apache, We just received a check for a lawsuit settlement . The check arrived after the cutoff date for cashing it. Three months to get to us. How do we get a new check?

Martha- If you can’t find any help let me know and email it to me. I have some contacts there.

Thanks. It was an odd situation. Apache sent the settlement check to an operating company who then sent a copy of the check to us with no cover letter explaining that they would then send our portion to us. Luckily, we caught the fact that the check was made out to the operating company and not to us and it wasn’t a real check. My assistant just sent a picture of the check, so I didn’t know it wasn’t real. Apparently the operating company sent a whole bunch of these out in their envelopes with no explanation. Strange things happen…