Derivative And Financial Instruments

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2015

Derivative And Financial Instruments [Abstract]

Derivative And Financial Instruments

5. DERIVATIVE AND FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS

To reduce the impact of fluctuations in oil and natural gas prices on our revenues, we periodically enter into derivative contracts with respect to a portion of our projected oil and natural gas production through various transactions that fix or modify the future prices to be realized.  These transactions are normally price swaps whereby we will receive a fixed price for our production and pay a variable market price to the contract counterparty.  These hedging activities are intended to support oil and natural gas prices at targeted levels and to manage exposure to oil and natural gas price fluctuations.  It is never our intention to enter into derivative contracts for speculative trading purposes.

Under ASC Topic 815, “Derivatives and Hedging,” all derivative instruments are recorded on the consolidated balance sheets at fair value as either short-term or long-term assets or liabilities based on their anticipated settlement date.  We will net derivative assets and liabilities for counterparties where we have a legal right of offset.  Changes in the derivatives’ fair values are recognized currently in earnings unless specific hedge accounting criteria are met.  We have not elected to designate any of our current derivative contracts as hedges; however, changes in the fair value of all of our derivative instruments are recognized in earnings and included as realized and unrealized gains (losses) on derivative instruments in the consolidated statements of operations.

As of December 31, 2015, we had the following derivative contracts in place for the periods indicated, all of which are accounted for as mark-to-market activities:

MTM Fixed Price Swaps – NYMEX (Henry Hub)

	For the Year Ended December 31, 2015 (in Bbls)
	March 31,			June 30,			September 30,			December 31,			Total
		Average			Average			Average			Average			Average
	Volume	Price		Volume	Price		Volume	Price		Volume	Price		Volume	Price
2016	1,098,689	$	4.13	1,048,146	$	4.14	998,394	$	4.14	963,327	$	4.14	4,108,556	$	4.14
2017	80,563	$	3.52	75,829	$	3.52	71,672	$	3.52	67,984	$	3.52	296,048	$	3.52
2018	79,042	$	3.58	75,404	$	3.58	72,115	$	3.58	69,122	$	3.58	295,683	$	3.58
2019	73,432	$	3.62	70,648	$	3.62	68,088	$	3.62	65,720	$	3.62	277,888	$	3.62
													4,978,175

MTM Fixed Price Basis Swaps – West Texas Intermediate (WTI)

	For the Year Ended December 31, 2015 (in Bbls)
	March 31,			June 30,			September 30,			December 31,			Total
		Average			Average			Average			Average			Average
	Volume	Price		Volume	Price		Volume	Price		Volume	Price		Volume	Price
2016	121,005	$	73.53	113,226	$	73.77	106,483	$	73.95	100,525	$	74.10	441,239	$	73.82
2017	57,953	$	64.80	54,554	$	64.80	51,570	$	64.80	48,926	$	64.80	213,003	$	64.80
2018	56,798	$	65.40	54,197	$	65.40	51,851	$	65.40	49,709	$	65.40	212,555	$	65.40
2019	52,760	$	65.65	50,784	$	65.65	48,960	$	65.65	47,264	$	65.65	199,768	$	65.65
													1,066,565

The following table sets forth a reconciliation of the changes in fair value of the Partnership’s commodity derivatives for the year ended December 31, 2015 and the year ended December 31, 2014 (in thousands):

	December 31,		December 31,
	2015		2014
Beginning fair value of commodity derivatives	$	22,829	$	10,601
Net gains on crude oil derivatives		22,410		13,983
Net gains on natural gas derivatives		6,148		5,871
Net settlements on derivative contracts:
Crude oil		(13,191)		69
Natural gas		(7,178)		(7,695)
Ending fair value of commodity derivatives	$	31,018	$	22,829

The effect of derivative instruments on our consolidated statements of operations was as follows (in thousands):

		Amount of Gain in Income
	Location of Gain	For the Year Ended December 31,
Derivative Type	in Income	2015		2014
Commodity – Mark-to-Market	Oil sales	$	19,147	$	19,854
Commodity – Mark-to-Market	Natural gas sales		6,003		-
		$	25,150	$	19,854

Derivative instruments expose us to counterparty credit risk.  Our commodity derivative instruments are currently contracted with four counterparties.  We generally execute commodity derivative instruments under master agreements which allow us, in the event of default, to elect early termination of all contracts with the defaulting counterparty.  If we choose to elect early termination, all asset and liability positions with the defaulting counterparty would be net cash settled at the time of election. We include a measure of counterparty credit risk in our estimates of the fair values of derivative instruments. As of December 31, 2015 and December 31, 2014, the impact of non-performance credit risk on the valuation of our derivative instruments was not significant.

Hedges Novated in the Eagle Ford Acquisition

As a part of the Eagle Ford acquisition, we received by novation from the seller certain hedges covering approximately 95%,  90%,  85%,  85% and 80% of estimated 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 oil and natural gas production from the acquired assets, respectively.  The counterparty for the hedges is a lender in the Partnership’s Credit Agreement. The Partnership is responsible for all future periodic settlements of these transactions.  As of December 31, 2015, the fair value of the hedges assumed resulted in a $15million asset in our consolidated balance sheet.

Embedded Derivative

The Partnership entered into a contract for the sale of preferred units in October 2015 which contained provisions that must be bifurcated from the contract and valued as a derivative. The embedded derivative is valued through the use of a Monte Carlo model which utilizes observable inputs, the Partnership’s unit prices at various timelines, as well as unobservable inputs related to the weighted probabilities of certain redemption scenarios. The Partnership has marked this derivative to market as of December 31, 2015, and incurred approximately $10.0 million loss as a result.

The following table sets forth a reconciliation of the changes in fair value of the Partnership’s embedded derivative for the year ended December 31, 2015, and the year ended December 31, 2014 (in thousands):

	For the Year Ended December 31,
	2015		2014
Beginning fair value of embedded derivative	$	—	$	—
Initial fair value of embedded derivative - bifurcated from mezzanine equity		(183,095)		—
(Losses) on embedded derivative		(9,982)		—
Ending fair value of embedded derivative	$	(193,077)	$	—