News for Jimmy Vallee

Fixed-income investors dismayed by skimpy earnings on bonds and bank savings might be wise to look further afield – maybe as far as the Permian Basin of Texas or Marcellus Shale country in Pennsylvania, where one can buy into an oil or gas processing plant, storage field or pipeline.
If that sounds like a game for just the big boys, think again.
Ordinary investors with a stomach for risk can play too, with master limited partnerships, or MLPs, a kind of fund traded in "units"...

Staff: The title of your book, Giant Shifts suggests we’re headed for big energy-driven changes. What do you see for the oil and gas industry in the next decade?
Jimmy Vallee: We’re already in the midst of significant and fundamental shifts in the oil and gas industry. We've recently completed one of the longest energy bull markets in a generation - the "shale revolution." Starting in 2000 and gaining momentum coming out of the 2008 financial crisis, the shale revolution...

Economic calamity is what to expect from a prolonged period of low oil and gas prices. In fact, it’s already happening. Job losses, corporate loan defaults, reduced investments and an end to the recent reshoring trend are all propelling the U.S. toward recession.
While conventional wisdom suggests we celebrate low oil prices as a consumer spending trigger — with spiking gas guzzler sales, more sales tax revenues, and cheap fuel for planes, trains and trucks — don’t...

Let’s Go Shopping is what unprecedented numbers of energy investors are saying and their wallets are overflowing with cash. With October borrowing base redeterminations looming, many upstream and midstream companies are hanging For Sale signs on high-quality assets.
Circumstances are ripe for the next energy M&A boom based on the amount of capital raised by energy-focused private equity firms that are now poised to go bargain hunting during this current period of low commodity...

Not long ago the oil industry looked like it had dodged a bullet. After the worst bust in a generation cut crude prices from $100 a barrel last summer to $43 in March, the oil market rallied. By June, prices were up 40 percent, passing $60 for the first time since December. Oil companies that had cut costs began planning to deploy more rigs and drill more wells. “We didn’t think we’d be quite this good,” Stephen Chazen, chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum,...

Halcon Resources Corp. almost ran into trouble with its banks in June 2013. And again in March 2014. And in February 2015.
Each time, the shale driller came close to violating debt limits set by its lenders, endangering a credit line that provided as much as $1.05 billion in much-needed cash. Each time, Halcon’s banks, led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., loosened their restrictions, allowing Halcon to keep borrowing.
That kind of patience may be coming...