Global oil demand will recover to pre-pandemic levels as soon as late 2022, but Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield said many oil and gas independents won’t be around to see it.
“There are probably going to be very few investable oil and gas independents at the end of the day,” Sheffield said Dec. 1 at the Reuters Future of Oil & Gas 2020 virtual conference. That’s because oil and gas independents account for a minuscule percentage of companies on the S&P 500 index, and of those, shareholders typically focus on only two or three.
Survival for many will require consolidation, of which five major deals have been announced in the past several months. Among them was Pioneer’s takeover of Parsley Energy.
“We’re excited about our Parsley acquisition, which we expect to close in the first quarter,” he said. “It will make Pioneer the largest pure-play independent in the Permian that’s public.”
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