Notes from the road: tight oil operator plans for 2024-2025

Key themes include efficiency expectations, inventory growth, M&A momentum and opex risks. Cost metrics remain the near-term tool investors use to judge winners and losers. Additionally, there’s a brewing tension between what asset buyers want and what sellers can offer. That’ll be showcased in deal premiums. We also noted a slightly higher tolerance for operational change – holding onto non-core assets, drilling even longer laterals and deploying new AI/ML tools. Buyers will quickly adjust the well spacing patterns sellers established too. And with scarcity premiums in Permian deals drifting even higher, more discussions featured new geographies and other basins, particularly the Uinta.