The oil price collapse has taken its toll on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across the U.S. oil and gas industry as companies preserve cash in these highly uncertain times. The appetite for dealmaking in the second quarter, when WTI Crude prices plunged to a negative $37 a barrel one day in April, was so low that Q2 ranked as the third-lowest quarterly value of upstream deals since 2009, oil & gas data analytics company Enverus said this week. Compared to the first quarter, the value of oil and gas deals jumped by more than 200 percent in Q2 – to US$2.6 billion from just US$770 million in Q1, Enverus’ U.S. upstream M&A report showed. However, the second-quarter deals included Pure Acquisition Corporation’s US$845-million merger with HighPeak Energy in the Permian’s Midland basin—a deal that was announced at the end of 2019 and was later recalibrated after the oil price […]