A fifth of U.S. crude oil producers are planning to use their cash flow from operations to fund new production expansion, a survey from Haynes & Boone has found. Besides cash from operations, producers will be using bank debt and private equity financing this year, the survey revealed, signaling continued improvement in the industry. In further good news for the industry, more than 80 percent of respondents in the survey said they expected borrowing bases this year to rise, which means the value of borrowers’ assets used as collateral when taking out loans will be higher. Still, the increase will not be major, at between 10 and 20 percent, Haynes & Boone noted. This is the most optimistic sentiment among oil producers since Haynes & Boone began making the bi-annual surveys in 2015. Interestingly enough, the focus of this optimism is not the Permian. In fact, survey respondents believed […]