Each quarter, Mercer Capital’s Exploration & Production Industry newsletter provides an overview of the E&P sector, including world demand and supply, public market performance, valuation multiples for public companies, and a region focus. This quarter we focus on the Bakken Shale.

Excerpting from the third quarter newsletter:

Oil prices trended up for the beginning of the third quarter but ended the quarter about where they started. For the last two years companies have postponed exploration activities and cut capital projects to drill new wells. Now that oil prices show signs of recovery, production has increased across the U.S.

Although oil prices have increased slightly, oil and gas bankruptcies continued in the third quarter as 52 companies filed for bankruptcy. The majority filed for Chapter 11 protection in hopes to reorganize. Many of the firms that went bankrupt were smaller companies who had less flexibility to exchange debt or draw a second-lien.

The price of crude oil is determined by market forces: supply and demand. In order to understand the current pricing environment, we analyze these metrics on pages 1 and 2 of the newsletter.

View the newsletter below or download the PDF.