Adriana Arias and Dave Mount headed to Midland TX for some client visits and Hart Energy’s, Midstream TX conference in early June. Additionally Henry Shurlds and Dave also attended the La. Energy Conference in May which was chock full of interesting information on the rapidly changing landscape in upstream and midstream oil and gas markets:

Midland: To our surprise we were able to obtain a reasonably priced, albeit pretty basic, hotel. The rental car was as predicted for Midland, as we rounded the corner to the rental counter to find we were roughly customers 70+ at the Avis counter. We did a quick switch to Hertz next door and need to give them a shout out in that they gave us the same rate as our reservation with Avis and we weren’t waiting over an hour to get a car. We’ve heard Lyft/Uber aren’t real options in Midland.

Our client visits with both upstream operating and midstream operating companies takeaway was that the private equity that’s been driving the phenomenal E&P growth in the Permian and “growth for growth’s sake” theme has been replaced with balance sheet discipline and living within cash flow. This has put a strain on many companies who have been growing quickly and have seen several companies either layoff, focus on cost containment or some are now contemplating or plunging into bankruptcy reorganization as a result of private capital becoming as dry as a Midland dust storm, which we did experience our first late evening.

Visits to our midstream clients showed more appetite for growth and hiring with still robust amount of projects in construction and design, although at TX Midstream conference most of the speakers pointed toward balance of takeaway capacity for crude oil to supply in two years then possible oversupply of takeaway capacity.

TX Midstream Conference was put on by Hart’s Energy Publishing in what appeared to be a very new Horseshoe Convention Center. It covered a large variety of topics relating to crude, natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL’s) in terms of projects, companies and U.S. and global supply/demand forecasts. Some notable impressions we received include:

1) The Delaware basin is the hot spot of development with both drilling and midstream infrastructure proceeding at a frantic pace. Same challenges that were faced in Midland are as bad or worse in the Delaware basin-people/infrastructure. Privately capitalized independents on the drilling/production side are yielding to the super majors being the dominant presence in the area. Several formations are yielding surprisingly better results than expected vs. the tried/true sands that have been prolific further east.

2) Midstream projects are still dominated by privately capitalized independents especially in field gathering/treating with the larger midstream public companies building pipes from Midland to export or trading hubs in either TX or LA.

3) The Permian/Delaware basins, per several speakers quoting EIA reserve estimates are saying these plays will overshadow Saudi Arabia’s economically recoverable reserves – an incredible statement

4) The U.S. is now the highest producing country in terms of barrels/day of production, another crazy reality.

5) Several speakers forecasted a global oversupply of crude oil through 2023, then natural decline will balance the market. So most forecasted range bound crude oil pricing for another 4 years.

6) Ironically even though the U.S. is still consuming more crude oil than it produces, the U.S. is becoming an export nation of crude oil, NGL’s and LNG and will continue to grow. New Mantra-Get to know who are or who can sell your product to international customers.
This is due to:

i. New plays in the U.S. producing a light/sweet barrel, yet the U.S. refining industry is set up for heavy/sour. This quality imbalance is creating pipeline and marine terminal export expansions across the Gulf Coast. Europe and Asian refineries are buying the US Light/Sweet barrel.

ii. NGL and natural gas are growing and surpassing U.S. domestic demand. This is spurring increased exports of NGL and LNG.

iii. Long term LNG demand is highly dependent on international gas fired electricity generation plant expansion

iv. Gas pipelines have been built to the Mexico border, but until gas pipelines on the Mexican side of the border are expanded, these pipes are idle.

Overall it appeared that the oil and gas market is pausing in some corners while midstream is growing and exporting is the future.

Dave Mount/Adriana Arias