Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I come to you today with a furrowed brow and a thinner wallet, for I have been spending far more money than my wells give back in cash flow, and I’ve done this for many years. I’ve done it in good times, and what’s worse, even in bad.

I fell in love with growth for growth’s sake and I fell in love with the shales. How could I not? But as a consequence, I made several huge and/or pricey acquisitions in order to grow faster and meet Wall Street’s ever-higher expectations. To do this, I often bought assets or leased new acreage at the high end of the market, paying more dollars per acre or per flowing barrel of oil equivalent (boe) than I probably should have.

Knowing that investors were watching over my shoulder 24/7, I kept scouting out the next deal. Truly, my A&D team grew faster than my geology department did. I noticed that most deal announcements were boosting stock prices more than production and financial results did.

Each time a new shale play was unveiled, we were cautious. We watched it carefully and once I was comfortable that it was “real” we tried to get in.

The problem with that strategy though, was that I ended up being late to the party most of the time, and not a fast-mover. I bought too much second-tier acreage. To be sure, I was trying to balance those buying opportunities with my capex for the 1,000 locations I already had in inventory.

Sometimes, I came across an amazing deal I couldn’t pass up and I bit off way more than I could chew, buying packages so large that they far outstripped my size, finances and operational capabilities. It made for a lot of juicy headlines and media attention, and a temporary bump in my stock price. Not a bad deal, since I was being compensated for stock price performance. We enjoyed it for a while. My market cap soared higher than I ever dreamt; everybody loved me then. The phone was ringing off the hook.

The board paid me performance bonuses and on paper, I grew richer and richer. I took my wife to Paris for our anniversary. I took three of my college buddies on a long-dreamt-of trip to Argentina to hunt quail. My art collection grew.

Then reality set in. Turns out, most of my peers were doing these things too. I soon found it was becoming tougher and more expensive to get a rig and an experienced frack crew to my locations. My waiting times grew longer. The price of sand was soaring. I was getting frustrated.

But wait—I did move to pad drilling, which offset some of these problems. I was able to drill more wells faster and my production grew and grew. My economics were not bad. It was incredible the progress we were making and I am grateful to my service providers for the amazing technologies they came up with. But suddenly, the U.S. had a glut of natural gas and oil. The prices have tanked and I don’t see an end in sight for a while.

Apparently I didn’t hedge enough, or at the “right” price. My ratio of enterprise value to Ebitda (earnings before all that other stuff) got way out of hand, lately as much as six times. How did this happen?

I see now that I’ve diluted my shareholders by issuing equity too often. I have punished my bondholders. I have sweet-talked my bankers with fancy Power Points.

Can I blame this on other people, since I use OPM? Everybody in Houston and New York has been knocking on my door, trying to get me to do any kind of A&D deal, or give me yet more money. In fact, I am still searching for some kind of new JV partner—but so are many other companies.

I’ve dug a hole, I admit, but now I’m trying to climb out of it—as fast as possible.

I’ve evaluated my assets in each play and I sold some of the bottom 10% last spring, but I wasn’t all that thrilled with the price per boe. I’ve pounded on my drilling contractor and he agreed to cut his dayrates 10% for me, if I promise to keep his rigs working through year-end.

What is my breakeven price? That’s what my board is asking; that is what my biggest investors are asking. It is controlled by three things: commodity price, well performance (EURs) and the cost of drilling and completion.

So here I sit, pouring over spreadsheets, negotiating with my banker and huddling with some investment bankers on the way forward. I’m sorry: I admit I pursued growth and forgot about return on capital and margins. I promise to do a 180 now. I will survive: I am a warrior.

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