There hasn’t been much Permian-centric M&A follow-through from last spring’s buy-out of Anadarko Petroleum by Occidental, (NYSE: OXY). At the time, the sages and pundits were widely predicting an M&A frenzy to carve up the turf. It didn’t happen. The likely reason being that there was so much fall-out from that deal for OXY, that “fear of glowing in the dark,” probably calmed the bloodlust of other potential raiders. For a while. There’s nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come however, and the current wave of Permian bankruptcies and asset write-downs provided an inflection point for the M&A sharks to begin circling their quarry. In December of last year, Felix Energy (Privately held) said, “yes,” to WPX Energy, (NYSE: WPX) with a second quarter 2020 “wedding date.” The funny thing was, the market approved, with WPX shares getting a nice boost just before Christmas. Stock analysts […]