Oil and gas firms planning to boost production in 2022

Southern Energy Conference
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The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank published results of a new poll last week showing that almost half of 131 oil and gas firms surveyed plan to increase production during 2022. It’s a finding that will no doubt cause a great deal of consternation among environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investor groups and the climate alarm lobby.

As Forbes reports, the finding comes at the end of a year, 2021, during which the prevailing watchwords in the oil and gas U.S. upstream sector were “capital discipline,” “debt reduction” and “maximize returns to investors.” Those three overarching objectives, along with the creation of free cash flow, certainly appeared to dominate the shale landscape throughout the year, as companies scrambled to focus on demands from the investor community, with a strong emphasis on their ESG-related goals. Given the past history of the shale sector during times of rising commodity prices, it seemed a remarkable display of maintaining discipline by the hundreds of E&P companies that drill for oil and gas in the U.S. Read the full story.