The Permian in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico continues to be the most prolific oil and gas producing basin in the United States, accounting for most of the output at the biggest public onshore producers and representing the bulk of oil and gas production at the top 50 producers.
These well-known facts found confirmation in a list compiled by Enverus, of the most prolific 50 public oil and gas operators in the U.S. based on gross operated production in 2024.
The rankings were reshaped by the wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the shale patch in the past two years, but the Permian continues to be king, Enverus says.
Supermajor ExxonMobil leads the rankings for 2024, keeping its number-one spot from 2023. Occidental Petroleum, ranked fifth in 2023, climbed to the third place, while the biggest U.S. natural gas producer – Expand Energy – formed after the merger of Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy, is a new entry at the top, taking the second spot on the Enverus list.
Due to mergers and acquisitions, the top 10 U.S. public onshore producers now account for 62% of production out of the Top 50 on a boe/d basis, up from 56% in 2023, Enverus CEO Manuj Nikhanj commented.
This was partly due to the $60-billion megadeal, which saw Exxon acquiring Pioneer Natural Resources in an all-stock transaction.
“It’s clear that the Permian is still the king, and the most active region operated by the Top 50 operators. Seven of the top 10 have the Permian as their most active region,” said Nikhanj.
The Permian also dominates the rankings in terms of production volumes – 81% of oil production and 40% of gas production from the Top 50 names comes from this one basin, according to Enverus data.
In the top three, Exxon’s onshore production was 1.96 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) last year, 53% of which oil and the Permian as the primary production region.
The new entry, second-placed Expand Energy, produced 1.69 million boepd last year, most of which is natural gas and most of this in the eastern U.S. gas shale plays in the Appalachia and Marcellus and Utica regions.
Oxy’s 1.22 million boepd with 58% oil and the Permian as its prime basin ranked it third on the Enverus list.
The rankings also showed that the U.S. shale patch has mastered the art of efficiency gains—fewer rigs in 2024 allowed for an increase in total oil and gas production in America.
The Top 50 public onshore producers were running a total of 298 rigs at the time of list compilation, Enverus’s Nikhanj said. This compares to 322 rigs at a similar point in time in the prior year.
“Notwithstanding the pull back, the approximately 10% increase in rig efficiency over this period is driving production growth, even at lower activity levels,” Nikhanj noted.
In the past couple of years, technological advancements and operational efficiency have allowed producers to maintain robust output even with fewer active rigs.
Going forward, the U.S. shale patch is unlikely to follow President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign highlight “drill, baby, drill” as the industry is far more consolidated and disciplined than when Trump was first president at the end of the 2010s.
After the Permian saw several large mergers and acquisitions (M&A) waves during President Biden’s term in office, the start of the second Trump presidency comes at a time when many of the private producers have already sold their operations to the large publicly traded companies.
These public firms have realigned their priorities after the 2020 crash in demand and prices, and now prefer higher earnings and shareholder returns to high growth rates in production.
As more drilling locations in the Permian are now in the hands of large listed firms, investor demands for high returns trump the high growth rates of oil production.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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