Forget notions of whether the downturn has created a buyer’s or seller’s market. It’s a private company’s market.

At the welcoming reception of Hart Energy’s Energy Capital Conference in Austin, I bumped into one of dozens of dealmakers, executives and advisors sipping drinks at the Omni Barton Creek.

How were things going at his firm? Busy—transactions were in progress, but in the $100-million range. So far, no sustained M&A had surfaced, he said. The first quarter of 2015 had been a shopping spree for private independents buying public corporations’ noncore holdings—largely gas.

At the beginning of 2016, many analysts and experts predicted an onslaught of deals. So where are they?

The truth may be that A&D activity is still locked in a no-win scenario. The bid-ask spread remains wide between buyers and sellers for more or less the same reasons deals died last year: In the oil and gas industry, hope springs eternal.

In March, Macquarie Research said that with oil prices “holding in the $30 range and liquidity for many firms becoming a greater focus, sellers could become more motivated,” resulting in a narrower spread.

That would seem to bode well for deals, except that production in the Lower 48 is tanking. The forecasted declines “will act to preserve optimism amongst sellers that crude could be rebounding, which could maintain dispersion in the spread,” Macquarie said. A thin first quarter in 2016 could stretch out into an even worse second quarter.

Still, after the Tarantino-like brutality of the first wave of 2016 borrowing base redeterminations, more companies could be motivated to sell. For the majority of E&Ps, the spring revaluations could trim borrowing bases by 20% to 30%, said Kevin Smith, analyst for Raymond James.

Companies that find themselves even more leveraged may need to move more assets. “This spring, borrowing base redeterminations will likely be more punitive than in the fall,” Smith said.

However, recent redeterminations belie what’s already happening in a capital-starved market. Sellers are trying to move noncore assets (again, gas) in nearly every region. Southwestern Energy wants to sell enough land to cover a third of Rhode Island. Comstock Resources is marketing about 9,900 net acres to exit South Texas. Devon Energy aims to dispose of between $2 billion and $3 billion in assets following its Stack purchase. Energen aims to sell $400 million in assets, with everything on the table except its Permian holdings.

Two dominant trends have emerged in the past eight months.

The first is that Permian Basin assets are a universal currency. In April, Parsley Energy purchased $359 million in assets in the Southern Delaware and Midland basins. It felt like old times, meaning two years ago. Values in the Delaware and Midland basins continue to hold up against pre-glut metrics.

The other trend involves private equity’s willingness to buy and wait for a recovery. Oil is presumably the quicker turnaround, meaning that public entities want to hold onto it.

The first quarter showed that deals are being driven by private companies and their readiness to make contrarian bets on natural gas. As Evaluate Energy Ltd. put it, private companies “dominated the first-quarter deal landscape in the U.S.”

The top E&P purchases made in the first three months of 2016 totaled roughly $4.9 billion. Of those, about 79% or $3.9 billion in deals were made by private companies. On the whole, they bought gas. As my friend at the Austin conference noted, private equity takes the long view.

Among deals with disclosed buyers, private companies bought from WPX Energy, EP Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Concho Resources and Rex Energy. Of the top 17 deals, 13 were made by private buyers; two were undisclosed, and one was a C-corp.

Comparing this year to last, U.S. E&P deals gained value in the first quarter. The top 10 deals in 2016 totaled more than $3.8 billion (excluding outliers). That compares to an anemic $1.4 billion in first-quarter 2015.

Most deals from 2015 were a solid mix of corporations and private companies, with Parsley, predictably, in the mix then as now.

Attendees at the Energy Capital Conference also got a preview of deals to come. S. Wil VanLoh Jr., Quantum Energy Partners’ chairman, co-founder, president and CEO, said volatility will rule.

Debt capital will be harder to get and cost more as the severity of the downturn changes how banks underwrite loans. Acquisitions will require more equity, he said, which “should drive down asset prices.”

But buyers are still needed.

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