E&P, Integrat​​eds and Refiners: Previewing JPM‘s 11th Natural Resources Conference; Buy-side Focus Remains on Power, LNG, and Data Center Themes

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E&P, Integrat​​eds and Refiners: Previewing JPM‘s 11th Natural Resources Conference; Buy-side Focus Remains on Power, LNG, and Data Center Themes

activity, and expect pricing increases to drive margin

expansion as utilization improves over the balance of the year.

• Resource expansion and the potential next leg of shale efficiency. We have

characterized the U.S. shale operating environment as a battle pitting engineers vs.

Mother Nature, where the work of these engineers has currently allowed the industry to

drive capital efficiency higher even as productivity on a per lateral ft basis has degraded

over the last several years (6-month oil cumes down by 8% YoY in the Delaware Basin

and 4% YoY in the Midland Basin for 2025). While E&Ps continue to squeeze more juice

from the lemon on D&C efficiency, the new wrinkle is a promising set of technologies

poised to boost well productivity (lightweight proppant, surfactants) and secondary

production via EoR, which could extend the plateau in U.S. oil supply and support lower

breakevens. Beyond technology, many E&Ps have leaned into resource expansion as a

parallel lever, highlighting the potential of the deeper Barnett and Woodford intervals in

the Permian and developing emerging plays like the Utica by leveraging their subsurface

and operational skill sets. We believe that the recent record BLM lease sale underscores

the premium the market continues to place on resource expansion for core acreage

positions (see our detailed note here). We look forward to hearing commentary from the

E&Ps at our conference on their potential levers to sustain productivity and extend their

inventory runway with key presentations including DVN, EOG, OVV, and XOM.

• M&A remains in focus. The E&P industry has seen a meaningful wave of consolidation