Wall Street financing is no longer necessary for the fracking boom, the majors have heavily consolidated the fracking industry over the last five or six years.

Wall Street financing is no longer necessary for the fracking boom, the majors have heavily consolidated the fracking industry over the last five or six years. That consolidation continues apace. The largest land owners in the Permian are now: Occidental, Exxon and Chevron. Ten years ago it was a very diverse ownership group of independent operators and speculators. The majors will keep buying until there are few small players left. Exxon doesn't need to go begging to Wall Street to give it a few hundred million dollars to finance more frack wells. For example, the richest oil wildcatter in the US might soon be this man: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-27/wildcatter-turns-big-dog-into-fortune-as-oil-giants-weigh-bids https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-27/wildcatte... Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon and Chevron would love to acquire his 329,000 acres in the Midland Basin in the Permian. Estimate on the price tag: ~$10-$15 billion. In mid 2017, Exxon bought 250,000 acres in the Permian from the Bass family for $5.6b to $6.6b. https://news.exxonmobil.com/press-release/exxonmobil-acquire-companies-doubling-permian-basin-resource-6-billion-barrels https://news.exxonmobil.com/press-release/exxonmobil-acquire... Over the last four quarters, Exxon + Chevron have produced $40 billion in operating income. And that's with modest oil prices. The fourth largest land owner in the Permian, is Apache, with 1.6 million acres (with ConocoPhillips in fifth). Apache's market cap is a mere $12b. It's obvious what's going to happen there. Exxon's market cap is $332b - they're just going to keep on acquiring the fracking industry (they used their well-valued shares - high for the energy industry - for the Bass deal). Companies the size of Exxon and Chevron can trivially afford to explore and prime wells in price downturns, then unleash them in upturns.