Energy Matters

It’s football season, and it comes none too early. (At least in Houston: Have you seen the Astros?) With the restart of football comes another season of the BCS——everyone’s favorite, king-maker-in-progress. What will this new BCS season bring? One thing’s for sure: heartache, heartbreak and a lot of unfortunate language for some college fans somewhere in America….
What would a BCS of upstream M&A look like? It’s the third quarter now and the upstream MLPs are favored for all the good year-end bowl games. Some of these deals have been high-profile: Atlas’ big bid for DTE Gas & Oil and its Antrim shale assets; Linn Energy’s $2-billion purchase of onshore assets from Dominion; EnerVest’s $750-million purchase from Anadarko with a roughly $100-million carve-out to EV Energy Partners; Constellation’s smart add-ons in the Cherokee Basin.
Yet more high-profile upstream deals this year have been made, or are under way, by MLP wannabes: carve-outs by Exco Resources including from purchases from Anadarko et al.; a carve-out by Encore Acquisition, including from its purchases from Anadarko; a carve-out by Plains E&P post-closing Pogo Producing. (For more on the lattermost, see the Plains/Pogo commentary below.)
How will points in this Upstream BCS be assigned? (Heck, how are points in the real BCS really assigned? The news today was that LSU was getting dangerously near USC’s in points, but USC was idle this past week, so what’s the value of that kind of analysis? Good grief.)
Points in the Upstream BCS will be assigned as follows: He who spends the most money wins, if it was well-spent.
One thing different about the Upstream BCS and the real BCS, though, is this: The title can be taken away at any time in the future if the “if it was well-spent” part doesn’t pan out.
Untold numbers of college football fans wish some National Champion titles could be revoked….
Go, upstream deal-making, go!

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