In my opinion, to understand the history and demise of unconventional E&P, you only need to deep dive into one company: Linn Energy $LINE. The most rancid of all the MLP shitcos and king of capital destruction.

Its story really tracked all the worst tenants of the shale era.

Think about it. Its MLP structure required it to constantly add production and leasehold to return dividends to the unit holders. This forced them into a relentless cycle of overpaying for insane A&D/M&A deals regardless of the underlying profitability.

Two examples spring to mind. Linn bought a small company called Lamamco in August 2008 for over HALF A BILLION dollars which owned legacy conventional midcontinent assets. Those assets were priced at $120+ oil and worth 0 after the global financial crisis hit a few months later.

But the MLP monster always needs MOAR, so Linn went out and drilled terrible horizontals and overpaid for the rights to do it. While treading water on the horizontal decline treadmill through the 09-14 price run-up, Linn bought Berry Petroleum $BRY for $4.3 BILLION in 2013.

The 2015 crash was the nail in the coffin. Linn, unable to feed the beast anymore, quickly went bankrupt, resulting in massive tax bills being sent to grandmas in Boca Raton who trusted their brokers. Linn paid the executives obscene eight figure bonuses for their “performance.”

Linn’s BK begat many hellspawn including:

Berry: spiraling the drain due to shit assets.
Roan: clean balance sheet, shit assets, dead in 18 months.
Riveria: near death holding the bags Linn couldn’t sell.
Teton Range: Linn’s CFO’s PE shitco wildly overpaying for STACK nonop.

There’s MUCH more, but dig in for yourself. Map out the whole history and family tree through today, talk to former employees, and you will begin to understand the true clown show that was 21st century American shale. Linn’s story covers all of it top to bottom.

CC @mr_skilling who can undoubtedly can add more to this. Would love to hear it.