Hart Energy took to the exhibition floor at the 30th annual NAPE summit to ask attendees: Do you expect M&A to continue to pick up this year? Here is what some of them had to say.

Meredith Roth, CMO, PakEnergy: We're PakEnergy, so M&A is our story. It absolutely is gonna continue.

Wood Allen, managing partner, Swenson Minerals Group: I don't know whether it's gonna be a snappy growth, but yeah, I do think it'll grow.

Andrew Graham, attorney at law, Steptoe & Johnson: I think depending, maybe upon the part of the country that you're in, maybe that makes a difference, but I think there will be, I don't know, maybe it's just being optimistic, but I think it'll pick up as the year goes off.

AJ O'Donnell, director of equity research, East Daley Analytics: We've definitely seen M&A heat up quite a bit in the Permian specifically, you know, over the last 12, 24 months. There's been a lot of consolidation already. There could be some other smaller deals out there, we're still seeing them being announced and... yeah, I would say maybe just slightly lower trajectory, but yeah, it's still somewhat hot.

Hesketh Streeter, executive vice president, Viking Engineering: The industry actually, for once, has been basically not spending all their cash. And basically you can get in debt, so there's a lot more control over how business is done, and that will open opportunities to actually do maybe the smaller companies, really niche M&A, but it'll be to see what the bigger companies do.