Business Insight Zone

In the past couple of weeks, Stallion Oilfield Services, Concho Resources, Vanguard Natural Resources, and Rex Energy Corporation have all filed to make initial public offerings. As shown on our IPO Central list of recent IPO filings, the IPO amounts for these companies range from about $145 million for Vanguard to more than half a billion dollars for Concho.

The reason for all this activity isn’t hard to find: sustained high oil prices. Hoover’s longtime oil and gas specialist Stuart Hampton puts it this way: “There is no better time to expand exploration activities, reactivate mothballed rigs and fields, drill new wells, and build more pipelines, than when excess profits are flowing into oil company’s coffers. It’s a bust and boom industry, and it’s boom time again.”

So, for as long as crude oil prices stay so high, the good times should keep rolling for oil industry IPOs.