It's just brutal out in the Bakken oil fields right now
It's been a rough year for the energy sector, and investors in two US regions have been feeling the pain more than most.
The stocks of oil and gas companies operating in the Bakken and Marcellus-Utica shale regions are down 52.3% and 57.3%, respectively, over the past year, according to a report from Morgan Stanley analysts.
That's compared to benchmark prices for the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), which is down about 45% over the past 12 months.
"The sector has broadly performed in-line with the commodity," the report said, adding, "performance within the sector has been quite disparate with quality operators/acreage and strong financials materially outperforming."
There's a common factor these regions share:
It's particularly difficult to extract resources in the Bakken and Marcellus-Utica shale regions.
The plunging price of energy over the past year has pinched the companies that have to invest the most to drill.
The Bakken region is primarily located in Montana and North Dakota.
The Marcellus stretches across a group of Mid-Atlantic states and includes Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, and Ohio.
