Over the past week or so Oklahoma City’s energy companies have been releasing their quarterly earnings reports, and some of the more interesting numbers came from SandRidge Energy. After the stock market closed Tuesday, the company reported a net loss of $404 million for the quarter.
“Their loss sounds bad, but we're seeing a lot of that with the energy companies for the last year,” said The Journal Record’s editor-in-chief Ted Streuli. “It's really only half the loss they had for the same period for the year earlier.”
The energy company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, and a judge approved the plan that forgave $3.7 billion in debt. The Journal Record’s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports:
The company has about $500 million in cash, according to a news release SandRidge issued Tuesday. CEO James Bennett wrote in a prepared statement he plans to lower 2016 spending by about $45 million, to about $240 million, down from his previous plan to spend about $285 million. The company is spending less money per well by improving drilling techniques. Workers are drilling oil and gas wells with multiple horizontal wellbores originating from a single vertical wellbore. Per-lateral costs are down to about $1.7 million.
Streuli says the news of improved drilling methods eased some spirits.
"Investors were at least somewhat buoyed by that news. The stock price ticked up 6 cents after the earnings report, that's about a quarter of a percent,” Streuli said.
Resort and casino development delayed
Two weeks ago the Chickasaw Nation announced it would build a hotel and casino at the dilapidated site of the former Lake Texoma State Park. But the project won’t get off the ground until the land goes into a federal trust.
“With the change in presidency, there's no way to predict how that might affect federal agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has to approve putting that land into the trust,” Streuli said.
The area has been desolate since a private group led by the late Aubrey McClendon and Mark Fischer tore down its 106-room lodge in 2009.
Once complete, the Chickasaw Nation’s project will be the third hotel and casino along the Oklahoma-Texas border between Interstate 35 and the point where the two states meet Arkansas. But The Journal Record’s Molly Fleming says the addition won’t saturate the market:
There are about 6 million visitors annually to Lake Texoma. The Texas side has a conference center and hotels, but on the Oklahoma side, the only hotels are in Kingston. The Choctaw Nation upgraded its hotel and resort in Durant this year, adding non-gaming amenities such as a spa, arcade, and bowling alley.
The new project will also be different than the Chickasaw’s Winstar Casino or the Choctaw Casino and Resort in Durant.
“This one will have more of a resort feel than the two existing Oklahoma hotels because it'll be right on water, they'll be some cabins down on the lakefront,” Streuli said.
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