Rob Quigley

Rob Quigley SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER! https://the-oneline-report.beehiiv.com/subscribe

I live in the O&G A&D deal flow.

Unbiased technical assessments of oil and gad asstes for sophisticated investors.

02/18/2026

NAPE tends to compress a year’s worth of conversations into a few very full days for O&G deal teams. (*Sound on for this vid*).

Calendars are stacked. Ballrooms are loud. Meetings run long. And more than a few of those conversations will turn into CIMs and data rooms faster than expected.

It’s one of the rare weeks where relationships start, capital gets aligned, and real transactions take shape.

Speed matters.
Discipline matters more.

Wishing everyone a productive week — and when those conversations turn into technical underwriting work, VSO is here to help pressure test the rock, the development plan, and the economics.

Good luck out there.

02/04/2026

Everyone’s afraid of overpaying. For good reason. Winning an asset and feeling good about the price doesn’t always happen.

A big part of that comes back to Ed Capen’s Winner’s Curse: in competitive auctions, the highest bidder is statistically the most optimistic bidder — not necessarily the most accurate one.

Solid technical underwriting is foundational. It’s something we spend a lot of time on at VSO. Getting the rock, development, and performance right materially improves your odds.

But bidding well goes beyond just having a clean model.

It also requires understanding where optimism creeps into competitive processes, when it actually makes sense to lean in versus walk away, and which levers you can responsibly pull to submit a confident bid that still lets you sleep at night.

The goal isn’t to “win” at all costs.
The goal is to win with conviction — and without regert.

AssetValuation TechnicalDiligence Upstream PetroleumEngineering

01/28/2026

You can feel the tone shift when assumptions are about to get tested.

Type curves.
Spacing.
Inventory.
PDP.
Commercial.

When engineers and geologists are in the room, banker’s optimism turns into math.

In mature shale, small changes in technical assumptions can drive very large changes in value. That’s why real technical diligence still matters — not to slow deals down, but to understand what actually survives contact with the rock and development history.

That’s not friction.
That’s value protection.
Reserves

01/21/2026

You sit there, listen politely, flip through the slides—and you know there’s a moment coming when one assumption tells you everything you need to know.

That’s usually how it goes in technical presentations. Most of it sounds reasonable. The framework makes sense. Then an inventory density, spacing assumption, type curve profile, or breakeven quietly doesn’t quite jive with reality.

This is where technical diligence earns its keep. In mature shale plays, underwriting is about whether the assumptions actually survive contact with development history, depletion, interference, and the rock itself.

Banker decks are built to present a clean narrative. Buy-side diligence is about figuring out where optimism starts to creep in—and what happens to value when it does.

Check the assumptions. Or be surprised later.
TechnicalDiligence

12/23/2025

Santa worked really hard to underwrite this one.🎄

Merry Christmas to everyone whose O&G brain never fully shuts off.

12/11/2025

Every once in a while during reserve season, you submit a first draft that instantly turns into a final draft. It’s a rare gift in a stretch of the year where the pace doesn’t slow down for anyone.

This is the season of decline reworks, LOE reconciliation, type-curve updates, and spacing reviews — all while making sure the narrative stays aligned with what the wells are actually telling you. It’s intense, but it also brings out some of the best teamwork of the year.

Management teams and consultants all pulling in the same direction to build clarity and confidence around the asset.

12/04/2025

That’s all it takes for a grounded engineer to start floating a couple inches off the floor. One strong well and suddenly the whole plan feels validated.

But real returns don’t come from a single overperformer — they come from stacking quality wins across a drilling program and across the stretch of time when you’re underwriting potential new assets. One datapoint can make us feel brilliant, but a pattern is what actually makes a good investment.

And that little formula — analysis + capital + ex*****on — only creates value when the first term is rock solid. If the analysis is grounded, the rest of the equation has a fighting chance. If it’s not, overconfidence shows up early and the disappointment shows up later.

That’s where VSO plugs in.
We pressure-test the technical side so your underwriting holds up — not just when a well surprises to the upside, but when the next five behave exactly like the model predicted.

If you’re working a deal and want the diligence done right, reach out. Happy to help on your next deal.

10/29/2025

Sometimes I’m genuinely impressed — and a little grossed out — by how creative some decline curves can get.

You’d think after two years, DCA on legacy wells would be the least controversial part of a deal. But you’d be surprised how often we stumble across a forecast that somehow turns a 1.5 Bcf well into 3.0.

Even “uncontroversial” wells can be modeled to help pump the valuation. That’s why it pays to have someone who knows the details worth vetting — before you end up paying for production that existed only in underwriting models.

At VSO, we build curves that live in the real world. Give me a shout if we can help you on your next deal.

10/08/2025

Good underwriting sometimes starts with uncomfortable questions.

Every slide in a sell side deck tells a story, but not every story survives a few technical follow-ups. At VSO, our job is to pressure-test the assumptions — EURs, costs, spacing, inventory, etc. — until the economics line up with reality.

We just do it with a smile… even when asking how a 100%+ IRR type curve and inventory was assigned for a bench that hasn’t been tested within 10 miles of an asset.

08/20/2025

Legend has it Jerry Jones drilled one $800k well and struck enough oil to buy the Cowboys. Truth or another Jerry tall tale?

In Netflix’s new docuseries “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys”, Jerry tells the story of how he drilled an $800,000 oil well and that well made him $100 million—enough to buy the Dallas Cowboys in 1989.

I did some rough math. At mid-80s WTI prices, that would imply something like an 11 million barrel EUR. On a single well. That’s a 124x ROI.

For those of us in the oil patch, that number sets off alarm bells. No one drills an $800k well and hits an 11 million barrel gusher. More likely, Jerry drilled a strong discovery well that opened up a field that produced 11mmbo and $100mm. That $800k test well probably set up a full development program, and the cumulative returns across that program may have gotten him to the $100 million mark.

But the way Jerry tells it? One hole, $800k in, $100 million out. The perfect gambler’s tale.

Still, I’d love to know the real backstory. Which field was it? What were the economics behind it? And if anyone can actually supply the API number for that first well, I’d love to go pull the records.

Sometimes truth in this business is even better than the legend.

08/06/2025

We’ve all been there — in a data room where asking for basic diligence items feels like you’re making unreasonable demands. LOS? PDP well list? God forbid...a shapefile?

Thankfully, the industry has come a long way. Most sellers these days do understand that better data leads to better bids — not just higher pricing, but more confident capital behind the offer.

Still, the variability in what gets posted deal to deal is wild. Some VDRs feel like you’re walking into a digitized war chest, others like someone dumped a folder from their desktop.

Bottom line: transparency reduces the bid haircut.

Would love to hear—what’s the most shocking omission you’ve seen in a data room?

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