When a company's cash flow does not align with its profits; and visa verse, they are manipulating their financials. Shale's cash flow has not aligned with its posted profits in 15 years. It has $320 billion in debt to show for it. The US government has displayed the same behavior since World War II, and it now has $22 trillion in debt as a result. The world has $253 trillion in debt, and a cash flow of 57. Now that oil production has begun its permanent decline that will come back in spades, and it won't take long. The pump monkeys will be standing in the same bread lines as everyone else.
Manipulating their financials? Have you been in a coma since the sixties perhaps? The numbers I quoted come from the fourth quarter filings to the SEC. Those numbers were audited by a major accounting firm who is legally at risk for not identifying false claims. The company itself is at risk of having its shares halted trading, fines and potential imprisonment for falsely reporting. Since Sarbanes Oxley there are very few small companies that would take this risk let alone a large company like Pioneer. To claim otherwise is simply you saying "oh...the numbers don't agree with the doom I want to spin so they must be lying".
You, like your cohorts here, have a very poor understanding of accounting principles and how free cash flow is calculated. It always includes depreciation, depletion and amortization which are accounting calculations very useful to the corporation as it allows them to get valuable tax considerations and also useful in understanding the total value of a corporation at the point of sale or merger (value of all those products owned that can be depreciated and are no longer "worth" what they were when they were paid for). In reality, DD&A takes no part in day to day business of oil and gas companies (as I have said in your own annual look at home budget do you include the depreciation on your house and car? Of course not). What does is the money you receive in revenues and the money you pay out to get those revenues on a yearly or quarterly basis. The income portion includes revenue from sales or oil, gas, and properties whereas costs include E&P expenses, OPEX, debt financing, G&A, etc. As I pointed out in the case of Pioneer their revenues minus the costs before E&P and property acquisition easily leave enough for them to conduct their business through cash generated (i.e no new debt) and in fact still have cash on hand remaining. It is all there in stellar black and white in their financial reporting, perhaps you need to learn to read a balance sheet. But according to you, anyone who doesn't report numbers that back up your ridiculous accusations is somehow lying even though it would mean the end of their company.
And you can mindlessly go on and on about debt but Pioneer like many oil and gas companies over the past couple of years has been gradually reducing their debt burden. That is also apparent from their filings. If what you and your cohorts here keep ranting about was anywhere close to the truth there wouldn't be any oil and gas companies operating in the unconventional as they would long ago have gone out of business. Banks are not loaning large amounts of money to oil and gas ventures anymore and there is certainly little appetite for equity investments (i.e new IPO or RTO) which means these companies have to be self-funding. As I point out from the financial filings of many of these companies you can see they are capable of that. I pointed out the same thing on another thread with respect to Concho Resources who someone here claimed was going bankrupt and the numbers instead showed that they were paying for all land acquisition and drilling out of their cash flow without taking on new debt.
How can anyone who treats red ink companies as viable be taken seriously?
Perhaps it requires being able to read a balance sheet properly. Your entire rant shows you haven't a frigging clue what the financials of any of these companies look like. What I pointed out was precisely the information they have filed. So pull your head out of your backside.