Mewbourne Oil Company claims on its website to have grown into one of the more prominent independent oil and natural gas producers in the Anadarko and Permian Basins of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The company focuses its efforts in the Anadarko and Permian Basins. Mewbourne clamis that the Anadarko and Permian Basins have produced more than 42 billion barrels of oil and 220 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and contain many of the largest oil and natural gas fields in the United States.
Mewbourne raises funds from investors through brokerage firms by selling interests in private placement partnerships. Those offerings include:
Mewbourne Energy Partners 11-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 12-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 13-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 14-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 15-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 16-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 17-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 18-A, L.P.
Mewbourne Energy Partners 19-A, L.P.
Our clients tell us similar stories that their advisors hyped oil and gas and commodities high yielding investments without significant discussion of risk. In a recent Associated Press article, common stories of how investors are pitched by their financial advisors on oil and gas investments were reported on. Often times these products are pitched as ways to ride the boom in U.S. oil and gas production and receive steady streams of income.
However, a Reuters article analyzing a few of these programs found that they suffer from conflicts of interests, hidden costs, and no meaningful oversight that would hold the program accountable to investors. As reported in Reuters, when offerings by Atlas Energy LP were analyzed investors only get to see 65-70% of their capital actually put to work on oil and gas projects. Further, the returns on these projects had more in common with running profitable casinos than investments. Reuters found that in slightly more than half of 43 private placements Atlas issued over the past three decades investors lost money or just broke even. While investors lost in more than half of the deals in 29 or 67% of those deals, Atlas actually out-performed their own investors.
Financial advisors must ensure that the oil and gas and commodities related investments being recommended to their client is appropriate for the investor and conduct due diligence on the company before making the recommendation. Unfortunately, sometimes advisors fail to conduct sufficient research or understand the risks and prospects of the company. Oil and gas and commodities related investments have been recommended by brokers under the assumption that commodities prices would continue to go up. However, brokers who sell oil and gas and commodities products are obligated to understand the risks of these investments and convey them to clients.
Our firm represents securities investors in claims against brokerage firms over sales practices related to the recommendations of oil & gas and commodities products such as exchange traded notes (ETNs), structured notes, private placements, MLPs, leveraged ETFs, mutual funds, and individual stocks. Investors who have suffered losses may be able recover their losses through securities arbitration. Our consultations are free of charge and the firm is only compensated if you recover.