Oil and gas sponsored drilling programs raised almost $300 million dollars in 2020. New drilling projects are taking place across various geological basins from places like the Permian, eagle ford, shale, Illinois basins. The main sponsors of these oil drilling programs are companies like Mewbourne, MDS, APX, STL, U.S. Energy, Waveland, Resource Royalty, Montego Minerals, and JHO to name a few. According to a recent white paper put out by due diligence firm Mick & Associates here is how much each drilling program raised in 2020:

1. Mewbourne – $55.31 million
2. MDS - $60 million
3. APX - $12 million
4. STL - $17.3 million
5. S. Energy - $64 million
6. Waveland - $22 million
7. Resource Royalty - $5.373 million
8. Montego Minerals - $12.5 million
9. JHO - $4.35 million

Oil drilling is inherently speculative and many times these products are sold to senior citizens looking to generate a stable long term income to supplement their retirement income. Soreide Law Group files lawsuits through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority or “FINRA” against brokerage firms that over concentrate customers into risky investments or sell high risk investments and downplay the risks. Soreide Law has filed dozens of lawsuits against many brokerage firms who sold these programs to their customers after the 2015 oil crash and oil may be setting itself up for another significant draw down.

Over concentrated positions in oil investments are totally unsuitable as stable long term income investments. Oil is historically extremely volatile and crashes every decade going back to the 1970’s. The chart below is a chart of the West Texas Intermediate crude price per barrel back to 1946.