Fasten your safety belts. The revenue picture in oil and gas has gotten interesting once again.

Forget conflict in Ukraine, or questions regarding the role of oil production in Iraq, Iran or elsewhere.

Instead, look only at commodity price and its impact on the domestic oil and gas industry. At $100 oil we’re all geniuses, so a quick glance at daily energy prices on any television business channel suggests there are a lot of smart people out there.

Just how smart? Consider the volume of money flowing into the industry on a monthly basis from oil, NGL and natural gas by multiplying domestic production times average monthly commodity price.

Hart Energy maintains an informal monthly revenue model tracking such a metric, which provides insight into how the sector is doing and, historically, provided short-term clues to the volume of expected field work over the ensuing 90-day period. At one point, the rig count tracked direction in monthly revenue with a 90-day lag, though the transition to pad drilling has obscured the correlation over the past 18 months.

The revenue model is a simple premise. Basically, dollars coming in the door for oil and gas firms go back out the door to employ service companies to develop more oil and gas.

The current metric shows combined monthly revenues from oil, NGL and natural gas topped $37 billion in February 2014, the last month for which official data is available on domestic production and pricing. The last time industry revenues were this high was May 2008. Industry revenues, riding high oil and natural gas prices (no one much cared about NGL back then) peaked at $43 billion in July 2008, then followed commodity prices over a cliff.

Eventually, monthly industry revenues fell to $12.7 billion in March 2009, resulting in a 60% retraction in the rig count and widespread dislocation in the energy industry. The trough is less important than the fact that February 2014 industry revenues are the fourth largest in the domestic industry’s history (unadjusted for inflation).

The current cycle will be challenged to exceed July 2008’s $43 billion. It is hard to imagine oil prices spiraling up to the $128-per-barrel average recorded that month. On the other hand, the industry is making up on volume what it has given up on price. U.S. domestic crude production reversed its long twilight decline after 2008 on the basis of tight-formation development in the Eagle Ford and Bakken shales. Indeed, monthly oil revenues in July 2008 reached $20.4 billion before falling to just $5 billion in February 2009. But in July 2008, domestic oil production totaled less than 4.5 million barrels per day.

In contrast, monthly oil revenue has been at $20 billion, or above, 15 times since March 2012, including the past 13 months. Currently, domestic oil production is 3.1 million barrels higher, or a gain of 69%, versus the July 2008 revenue peak.

The question is whether domestic oil revenues will set a new monthly high in April 2014, thanks to $100-plus oil prices, exceeding the August 2013 record of $23.9 billion.

The current revenue spike is also rooted in February 2014 natural gas revenues as record cold temperatures descended on the U.S. Buoyed by an average Henry Hub monthly price of $6 per thousand cubic feet, natural gas monthly revenue reached $11.3 billion in a short 28-day month.

Maybe the number pales when compared to the peak $18.8 billion in July 2008, but it is certainly an improvement over the $3.7 billion trough in April 2012. Actually, monthly natural gas revenues had been range-bound at $7.5 billion, plus or minus, during the second half of 2013 before rallying into the cold weather at year-end. Indeed, industry natural gas revenues rose about $1 billion per month in December and January.

Couple gas with liquids and the revenue picture gets more interesting yet. NGL revenues set a record of $4 billion in February 2014 on the basis of a modest pricing increase as propane went wild, coupled with record production of 2.9 million barrels of NGL for the month. The $15.4 billion in monthly revenues for natural gas and NGL during February was the highest figure since the two commodities recorded $17.8 billion in August 2008.

Those are a lot of numbers to juggle. The particulars are less important than the takeaway. And the takeaway is that industry revenues, at this level, suggest that expectations of expanding domestic activity, which have been extraordinarily optimistic of late, may actually be understated.

Monthly x $1 billion

Source: U.S. EIA; Hart Energy

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