Hearings are in progress in New Mexico before the state’s Public Regulation Commission for the proposed sale of New Mexico Gas Co. to a Louisiana-based private equity firm.  Bernhard Capital Partners proposed the $1.25 billion takeover of the state’s largest natural gas utility from Canadian firm Emera, the current owner of New Mexico Gas that […]

Midland’s Diamondback Energy said this week it is content to hold oil production flat while also being prepared to boost or reduce output if market conditions change significantly.  In Diamondback’s third quarter earnings report Tuesday, Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, said, “We firmly believe there is no need for incremental oil barrels until there is a […]

The state’s new task force on petroleum theft conducted its first meeting last week in Austin.  Jim Wright, chair of the Railroad Commission of Texas, presided over the meeting Oct. 29 of the new group created in the recent 89th session of the Texas legislature.  Wright told task force members, “Your work in the coming […]

Permian Basin reported an additional active drilling rig for the second time in three weeks in Baker Hughes’ weekly count as of Oct. 31.  Permian now has 251 rigs (up 1 in the past week but down 52 or 17.2 percent from 303 a year ago). Also as of Oct. 31, there were 235 rigs […]

Spring, Texas-based ExxonMobil said Friday its third quarter net production of 4.769 million boed included record output from Permian Basin and Guyana.  In the Permian, ExxonMobil set a production record of nearly 1.7 million boed while continuing to expand the use of proprietary technologies such as its lightweight proppant that improves well recovery by up […]

SM Energy and Civitas Resources have agreed to merge and create a top 10 independent oil and gas company that will produce more than 500,000 boed from Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, DJ Basin in Colorado and two other basins.  The combined company’s enterprise value of about $12.8 billion includes each company’s net […]

Natural gas assets emerged as a bright spot for upstream mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry in third quarter.  Enverus Intelligence Research said last week buyers remain constructive on the commodity as LNG exports and growing datacenter power demand fuel expectations for higher prices.  A diverse group of buyers – including TotalEnergies, […]

After a strong start to the year, upstream mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry fell into a slump in the third quarter and registered the third straight quarterly decline.  Deal value in 3Q dropped to $9.7 billion – led by Crescent Energy’s acquisition of Vital Energy in Permian Basin for $3.049 billion […]

U.S. Energy Information Agency reported last week that wind and solar generation – especially utility scale solar – have been the fastest growing sources of electricity since 2023 for ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas).  Electricity demand on ERCOT has steadily increased since 2021, and ERCOT had the fastest electricity demand growth among U.S. electricity […]

ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum remain the leading operators in Permian Basin, according to the latest report by Enverus.  In its summary of North American rig activity as of Oct. 17, Enverus said the latest weekly average for Exxon in Permian was 34.9 rigs followed by Occidental’s 20.3.  Other leaders include Mewbourne Oil with 13.9 rigs, […]