The Delaware Basin Oil Play -$BX

I wrote this a year ago but never published it. Blackstone is way up since then. I’ll just leave it here now.

Blackstone Group LP said Thursday that it has agreed to invest $1.5 billion in a pair of drilling deals there. One came about after the New York investment firm early this year lost out to a big oil company bidding on about 12,000 acres south of New Mexico. Blackstone didn’t walk away from the auction empty-handed, though, having convinced the sellers to join it in a new billion-dollar drilling venture in the area.

The firm also committed $500 million more to another group of experienced oilmen who had purchased 16,000 acres about 100 miles to the northeast, in another section of the region’s red-hot Permian Basin.

Cash for the deals came from an $8 billion pool that has otherwise sat largely untapped since Blackstone raised the money to invest in energy early last year.