Over the last year, ‘permania’ has become so frenzied that the land rush drove exploration rights prices in West Texas sky high—and along with it, equipment and labor costs. So, what’s next? While most analysts and oil companies focus on the larger portion of the Permian in Texas, southeastern New Mexico—home to the smaller part of the shale play with part of the Delaware Basin—has seen increased deal and drilling activity in recent months. Now, shale drillers and oil majors want access to the Permian without paying the high prices and costs in Texas. And they’ve started using cheaper New Mexico as a kind of ‘geological back door’, as Bloomberg’s David Wethe put it, through which they can boost their position in the Permian. Exxon did it in January this year, by buying companies owned by the Bass family, with an estimated resource of 3.4 billion barrels of oil […]