Why the Permian Basin won’t replace lost Middle East oil, with Jai Singh and Matthew Bernstein

Let’s Talk Energy and kick off our first episode back from our summer break with a look at the Permian Basin. The production trajectory in the Permian has been one of the single most important variables to understanding global oil supply – if not the entire oil industry – for much of the past decade.

Permian production more than tripled since the start of the US tight oil revolution around 2014 and now sits above 6.6 million barrels of oil per day -almost half of US oil output – and well over 25 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas.

In the process, hundreds of companies sprang up, rapidly drilled, merged, drilled a bit slower and merged again as they sought to win over investors whose demands shifted from rapid growth to cash returns.

But the days of jaw-dropping production gains are over, and companies aren’t inclined to ramp up activity to fill the hole in global supply left by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

In this episode, we’ll look at:

• How much affordable oil is left in the Permian and how long might operators be able to keep up current rates of production?

• Which companies control the highest number of choice locations, and do they have enough to earn the confidence of investors keen to know if their cash returns are sustainable?

• And what are the implications of the rising volumes of natural gas that are trading at much higher prices than they did in the past?