RE:RE:...when oil was 50.00 When oil was $50, BTE's production was 90,000 BOE/D. They are now guiding to 70,000, a 22% decline. Only about 1/3 of this decline is due to shut-ins, the balance is due to lack of drilling.
When oil was $50 there were 168M shares outstanding, there are now 210M shares outstanding. So on a per share basis the picture is worse: BOE's per million shares has gone from 535 to 333 - a drop of 38%
The reason the share price is trading down about 70% or so versus 38% in per share production, is due to the leverage. The way you should look at it is the first 60,000 BOE's are owned by the debt holders, the balance by the equity holders. So the equity holders have lost 2/3's of their barrels.
On top of all this, a year ago, they had far more hedging protection a year ago than they do presently.
Manipulation (shorting or otherwise) is not factor with the current share price. It is trading on fundamentals.