During the U.S. shale boom, fortune favored the bold drillers that discovered and pumped oil fastest. Today the winners are producers like Pioneer Natural Resources who best shielded themselves from tumbling prices. Using derivative transactions known as swaps and collars, the Texas-based firm locked in a minimum price for 85 percent of this year’s production. As a result, it gets $60 per barrel for a large chunk of its output while many rivals are selling at the market price of around $30, often not even enough to cover the cost of drilling new wells. Pioneer shares, though down 23 percent since the start of 2015, outperform a broad S&P index of oil and gas producers energy sector whose value dropped 46 percent. The company also managed to sell $1.4 billion worth of new shares to investors this month – a rare feat in a market that has shut for […]