On September 22, 2026, the US Energy Information Administration published an ownership count with an extraordinary imbalance.
Public companies represented just 2% of America's roughly 12,000 oil and gas producers in 2025.
They accounted for 68% of combined crude oil and natural gas production in the Lower 48 states.
If you own energy shares, most of that production already sits inside the kind of businesses you can buy.
But the national total hides a regional split that can leave you owning the wrong producer for the bet you wanted to make.
Our preference is to choose the basin and the commodity first, then the stock. The EIA's new figures show why an all-purpose bet on American energy can miss both.
The Small Group Producing Most of It
The EIA compiled the ownership picture from Enverus data, measuring oil and gas together in barrels of oil equivalent.
That last phrase deserves some care.
Oil equivalent puts different fuels on a common energy basis. It does not mean a barrel of crude and an equivalent amount of natural gas earn the same revenue.
Nor does the ownership count tell us that production suddenly changed this morning. The release is new; the production year is 2025.
What we have is a way to examine the businesses behind the national supply number.
The agency attributes the public producers' advantage to acreage quality, technology and economies of scale.
"Publicly traded companies generally report lower breakeven prices"
That is the EIA's conclusion in its September 22 release.
Lower operating breakevens give a producer more room when selling prices fall. Better acreage can also produce more volume for the work required to develop it.
Neither advantage guarantees a good return on an expensive stock.
A company can own excellent wells and still pay too much for the next acquisition. It can also distribute more cash than its business can sustain through a weaker commodity market.
So what should we take from the public companies' dominant share?
We have ample access to the producing assets. The harder job is deciding which assets can turn their production into cash after investment and financing costs.
The EIA's national count gets us to the listed market. Its regional breakdown helps us choose within it.
The Exception Sits in Gas Country
In the Permian, public companies produced four times as much oil and gas as private companies in 2025, according to the same EIA analysis.
Yet they represented only 3% of active operators there.
In Appalachia, the public producers' output was nearly five times the private producers' output.
A small number of listed businesses therefore provides access to a large part of production in those regions, though no single stock represents an entire basin.
Then we reach the Haynesville, in Texas and Louisiana.
Private companies accounted for 55% of its combined oil and gas production in 2025.
It was the only major producing region in the EIA's comparison where private operators held the majority.
And private does not mean small.
The largest five private natural gas operators supplied 38% of Haynesville gas output, or 5.8 billion cubic feet a day, in that year.
Why should you care if those companies have no shares on your brokerage screen?
Because their production still competes with the gas your company sells.
If we build a supply forecast by adding up only listed producers' guidance, we can miss a substantial part of this basin. A private rival can expand even when the public companies on our watch list are holding spending steady.
The EIA's snapshot does not tell us which private operator will drill more next quarter. It tells us why public-company guidance alone cannot settle that question.
This also cuts the other way: a private majority does not prevent you from buying a listed producer with Haynesville exposure.
It means we need to establish what that stock actually owns, and how much of its business lies elsewhere.
The Same Producer Can Receive Two Different Prices
Diamondback Energy, which trades on Nasdaq as FANG, is an oil and gas producer focused on the Permian Basin.
Its August 3 results for the second quarter of 2026 provide a useful test of the EIA's oil-equivalent arithmetic.
For the second quarter of 2026, Diamondback reported an average oil price before hedging of $96.82 a barrel.
Its average natural gas price before hedging in the second quarter of 2026 was negative $2.15 per thousand cubic feet.
Those prices belong to different products and different units, so we cannot subtract one from the other.
But their opposite signs tell us something a combined production total cannot: the same company was receiving a positive price for oil while reporting a negative realization for gas.
In the second quarter of 2026, hedges improved its reported gas price to negative $0.34 per thousand cubic feet.
Could a company with negative gas realizations still generate substantial cash?
Diamondback reported $2.3 billion of free cash flow, under its own non-GAAP definition, for the second quarter of 2026.
That combination is why we would examine FANG as an oil investment before treating it as a bet on stronger natural gas prices.
The upside case is the cash its oil operations can generate. The risk is that a weaker oil price erodes that cash while gas realizations remain poor.
Owning production does not protect the price you receive for it.
We made a related distinction in A Million Dollars a Day, where we separated the quoted crude price from the cost of moving a cargo.
Here, we need to separate the national production number from the economics inside the producer.
You can be right that America produces enormous quantities of energy and still choose a stock whose earnings respond to a different price than the one you are watching.
The Gas Stock Reaches Beyond One Basin
Expand Energy, listed on Nasdaq as EXE, produces natural gas across the Haynesville and Appalachia.
Its operating-area description places the Haynesville assets near liquefied natural gas export infrastructure, while its Appalachian operations give it exposure to another producing region.
Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is gas cooled into liquid so it can travel by ship.
Proximity to export infrastructure is a reason to investigate the company's route to customers. It does not establish that every unit of its production receives an overseas price.
What does the production mix show?
In its July 28 second-quarter results, Expand reported that 92% of production was natural gas.
The company reaffirmed expected full-year production of 7.4 to 7.6 billion cubic feet equivalent a day.
That gives us a gas-focused candidate, with assets spanning regions whose ownership structures differ sharply in the EIA's analysis.
For a stronger domestic gas-price thesis, EXE deserves a place on our watch list. Its gas-heavy production offers exposure to improving realizations, subject to its sales arrangements and hedges.
The risk is equally direct: abundant competing supply can restrain those realizations, even if demand grows.
And you are buying the whole company, including its other operations, costs and capital decisions. You cannot select only the Haynesville wells when you buy the shares.
We would judge EXE against its own realized gas prices, spending and cash generation as fresh results arrive.
A national production share cannot do that work for us, and the EIA has supplied no valuation that makes either stock an automatic purchase.
What We Would Watch This Week
Let's put the whole picture in one place:
- Listed producers dominate national output.
- Haynesville's private majority complicates the gas supply forecast.
- Oil-equivalent volumes hide different prices.
- FANG and EXE expose you to different commodity risks.
Our preference is to keep those investment decisions separate.
For an oil position, we would put FANG on the research list and test whether cash generation can hold up under lower realized oil prices.
For a gas position, we would follow EXE while accounting for the supply coming from private competitors as well as public ones.
Before adding exposure, the next checks arrive on consecutive mornings.
The EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report schedule puts the next regular release on September 23, 2026, after 10:30 a.m. Eastern.
We will compare crude inventories, refinery activity and production estimates for evidence of whether supply is outrunning demand. A single inventory draw would not establish that either stock is cheap.
The Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report schedule puts the next release on September 24, 2026, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.
There, we will watch the storage change and its comparison with seasonal norms. Persistent surplus supply would weaken the case for improving gas realizations.
Neither weekly report separates all those flows into public and private operators. We use them to test the commodity conditions in which the companies operate.
The ownership data explain where you can invest. The company results show what that exposure has earned.
You can buy the producer.
You still have to earn back the price you paid.
Seek the truth and be prepared,
Equedia
Sources
- US Energy Information Administration, Public companies produce most U.S. crude oil and natural gas, September 22, 2026
- Diamondback Energy, Company overview, accessed September 22, 2026
- Diamondback Energy, Second-quarter 2026 financial and operating results, August 3, 2026
- Expand Energy, Operating areas, accessed September 22, 2026
- Expand Energy, Second-quarter 2026 results, July 28, 2026
- US Energy Information Administration, Weekly Petroleum Status Report schedule, checked September 22, 2026
- US Energy Information Administration, Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report schedule, checked September 22, 2026
- The Equedia Letter, A Million Dollars a Day
Disclaimer: This letter is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past predictions and performance are not indicative of future results. Please see our full terms of use and disclaimer at equedia.com.
