There's oil in them thar hills! (and here are the costs to find them)

The history of oil is littered with wildcatters and pioneers that were willing to take risks go off into far away dangerous place in order to drill a hole in the ground to find and develop new reserves.

On one end of the oil spectrum there are the characters of Drake, Samuel, Lucas, Guffey, Galey, Joiner, Reynolds, Hammer, Holmes, Doheny, Getty, Mitchell and McClendon. Men with a large appetite for risk (some times too much for investors) that pays off for not only themselves but the industry & society as a whole.

On the other end are the more financially conservative personalities of Rockefeller, Raymond, Deterding and Mellons to name a few. One could characterize the post 2020 E&P industry as a whole to be in this group.

There is no “right” or “wrong” per se, rather, the two groups are the yin and yang. The former brings about new supply so the industry can continue while the latter is needed to restore order after its deluge of supply.

They wax and wane. And often times people and management teams are merely present at the right (or wrong) time.

One of my favorite quotes from the first historian, “circumstances rule men, men do not rule circumstances.

Below is a picture of how the major liquids focused E&P have spent their capital since the data was first required to be disclosed by the SEC in the late 1970s.

includes COP, OXY, EOG, PXD, CLR, MRO, HES, DVN, FANG and acquired companies