Oil & Gas PE Investments...?

I'm sympathetic to the havoc in the oil patch, but can someone explain to me the logic for PE investments in oil & gas (or other commodities)? I've never actually modeled one, but have to assume that if the price of the only thing the company sells - again: oil and/or gas - falls below a certain level, no amount of financial engineering, operational efficiency, or anything else will yield the cash flow necessary to support debt. And no one in PE or anywhere else knows where those prices are going 3,5,7 years out.

Wasn't that kind of the expensive lesson we all learned from Energy Future Holdings?

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Energy assets are unique in that the bulk of the value of the asset is manifested in reserves and that flash crashes like the one we saw this week affect a fraction of the monthly/annual production from the asset.

That being said, PE companies who ran strips a year ago at $50/bbl are certainly feeling the pressure as realized prices dip below their break even points for a sustained period of time.

My intel is picking up that there is an expectation that from a combination of macro supply cuts, production disruption from shut-ins, cuts to new wells POP combined with resumption of "normal" economic activity, that prices are going to whipsaw upward in 12-18 months. Now that is a long time to sustain negative cash flow, certainly but as the saying goes, the best cure for low oil prices are low oil prices.

 

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