A Piece of Cake for Matador
It’s hard not to share a great earnings story when you read one and for Reese Energy Consulting today that news belongs to Dallas-based Matador Resources.
But first, let’s revisit 2017 when the New York Times characterized the mad dash afoot for acreage in Texas and N.M., with this headline: ‘Land Rush in Permian Basin, Where Oil Is Stacked Like a Layer Cake’. Oil prices at the time averaged $50 a barrel but hardly discouraged multi-billion-dollar deals by the likes of Exxon and Noble.
A year later, the BLM held N.M.’s largest oil and gas lease sale in 10 years, where Matador snapped up drilling rights on 2,800 acres in the Delaware for a record-whopping $95,001 per acre. Now five years later—and despite the current cycle of crude prices—Matador has made two seriously savvy moves in short order to grow both its Delaware production and the midstream assets servicing them.
The company reports 2Q earnings of $164.7 million, a shy higher than 1Q, but with 130.68 MBOED in production—a 23% increase over 1Q attributed in large part to its January $1.6 billion acquisition of Advance Energy that increased its Delaware position to 155,000 acres. Matador last June continued expansion of its Delaware gathering and processing capabilities with the $75 million acquisition of Summit Midstream, which included a 60 MMCFD cryogenic gas plant, three compressor stations, and 45 miles of gathering pipe. This boosted not only Matador’s ability to service its own operations but has created more opportunity to flow third-party production—a strategy it continues to build upon and a story we can all get behind.