Energy & Related Industries

Sisterson's professionals have worked in the oil & gas industry for decades. This experience covers work for operators and investors in exploration and production, processing, and other mid-stream ventures in most geographic areas of the United States where there have been significant on-shore E&P activities. Our experience includes auditing, accounting, and tax services as well as a variety of other assurance and consulting services involving areas such as valuations, acquisitions and divestitures, joint ventures, joint interest billing audits, royalty audits, payout audits, operator transitions, litigation and forensic accounting and other matters. We are familiar with accounting for conveyances, leaseholds, cost-sharing arrangements, drilling and development costs, asset retirement obligations, revenue recognition, lease operating costs, impairment, hedging arrangements, joint interest billings, and reserve determinations.

Audit and Assurance Services

• Audits and reviews of financial statements – GAAP and tax basis
• Agreed-upon procedures on matters such as contractual compliance, expenditures, operator overhead, allocations, payout calculations, vendor changes, etc.
• Performance of, or assistance with joint interest billing (JIB) audits
• Internal control reviews of operator/manager groups
• Field equipment, wellhead equipment and inventory observations
• Reconstruction of leasehold records
• Royal interest audits

Tax Services

• Corporate and partnership tax returns of E&P companies and investors
• Tax planning in connection with exploration and development projects, acquisitions and divestitures, joint ventures, and other major transactions
• Tax projections
• Energy industry tax issues including multi-state tax issues, alternative minimum tax, tax planning, depletion, and other industry-specific matters
• Entity structural planning
• Assistance with audits of E&P companies and investment entities by tax authorities
• Tax planning and compliance for landowners with oil and gas leases

Advisory Services

• Acquisition and divestiture due diligence
• Assistance in preparing final closing statements for sellers of oil and gas properties
• Assistance in testing final closing statements for buyers of oil and gas properties
• Initial general ledger system setup
• Valuations of royalty interests, overriding royalty interests, and other property interests
• Advice to operators on joint interest billing practices
• Purchase price allocations
• Litigation services regarding matters such as disputes with operators, landowners and overriding royalty interests
• Business process review and optimization to utilize existing software applications
• Business operations system development to integrate and analyze the general ledger, budgets, forecasts and business metrics – from one centralized source of data