在过去的十年中,随着页岩压裂繁荣has spread across oil-and-gas-rich areas of the U.S., from North Dakota to Oklahoma and Texas, money and growth have followed. Drilling towns, reminiscent of towns that grew up along the routes of the country’s first railroads, have created opportunities for every industry, from energy to real estate to retail. Exploration and production firms have sprouted quickly and created thousands of jobs, many of them in pipeline building, as E&P companies build their own, rather than wait for the shipping and storage arm of the burgeoning industry to catch up.
但潮流近几个月已经扭转，油价低于页岩生产商，其业务比传统石油生产成本更高。他们必须继续生产，无论商品价格如何，以支付成本，因为石油悬停每桶60美元左右的困难。过去几个月的价格暴跌导致了11周的水平页岩石油钻机关闭和新的开发项目延误。
仍然，专家们optimistic that U.S. shale will survive任何努力将其推出石油市场，而过去两周则显示出价格上涨。但要保持盈利，生产者需要重新评估其战略和资本结构。
低油价造成的震撼已成为一个动机，专家表示，它将造成一系列新的交易机会，特别是专门从事行业中游部分的公司，专注于建设管道和运输和储存油和储存油天然气，作为在未来几个月内需要股权的E＆P公司。“主要机会的跨地是主要机会的地方，”匹兹堡堡垒本地集团的校长史密斯，校长和Cio，一家价值投资公司，管理层为14亿美元。
基于休斯顿的能源基础设施公司Kinder Morgan在过去几周内同意了两周的交易，支持这一趋势：在1月份，摩根表示，它将通过购买俄克拉荷马州的管道大量合作伙伴关系，扩大其在Bakken的存在。$3 billion, and last week it agreed to buy three storage terminals from Dutch midstream firm Royal Vopak in the U.S. for $158 million.
虽然交易并不是那么大，但史密斯在地平线上看起来更像。“我认为这一趋势可能会加速，因为生产者需要资金，特别是如果他们被杠杆，”他说。“很多人都有很多借助债务。”
大多数页岩公司专注于产品生命周期的上游部分，主要包括勘探和生产;销售他们的存储和运输行动不会削减到他们的核心业务中。此外，管道是具有既定值的固体资产，与通过它们运行的油不同，这与最近的价格湍流变得困难。
“In a time like the present, when it’s hard to make deals on oil-based assets because no one knows what a good price is, it’s a lot easier to sell a midstream system that runs on a fee-for-service basis,” says David Asmus, the Houston-based leader of law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius’s energy transactions practice.
这些业务有很多兴趣，包括Kinder Morgan等管道公司，以及寻求积聚其能量持有的私募股权球员，Asmus预计今年上半年的销售额有更多的销售额。
市场上游的市场是另一个故事。Asmus表示，他仍然看到比生成的更多计划的上游收购，因为行业中的传统球员之间的交易现在非常难以估计。
如果油价达到许多预测的平衡，那么竞技场的交易可能会在今年晚些时候接受。由于石油现场服务公司巩固，应对钻井和相关服务价格的需求，该行业也可能会看到大量的并购活动。
“It’s going to take a while for the price to move back up to a territory that’s reasonable for fracking,” which is typically above $60 per barrel, says Joel Moser, founder and CEO of Aquamarine Investment Partners, a New York–based real assets fund.
According to reports from Goldman Sachs Group, Barclays and UBS in recent weeks, an oil recovery — which for shale would be stable prices in the $60 to $70 per barrel range — could be as much as six months away. “That really is longer than most investors or certainly most debt providers are going to want to wait,” Moser says.