6.  Derivative Financial Instruments

Our market risk exposure relates primarily to commodity prices and, from time to time, we use various derivative instruments to manage our exposure to this commodity price risk from sales of our oil and natural gas.  All of the derivative counterparties are also lenders or affiliates of lenders participating in our revolving bank credit facility.  We are exposed to credit loss in the event of nonperformance by the derivative counterparties; however, we currently anticipate that each of our derivative counterparties will be able to fulfill their contractual obligations.  Additional collateral is not required by us due to the derivative counterparties’ collateral rights as lenders, and we do not require collateral from our derivative counterparties.

We have elected not to designate our commodity derivative contracts as hedging instruments; therefore, all changes in the fair value of derivative contracts were recognized currently in earnings during the periods presented.  The cash flows of all of our commodity derivative contracts are included in Net cash provided by operating activities on the Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows.

As of March 31, 2018, we did not have any open commodity derivative contracts and did not enter into any derivative contracts during the three months ended March 31, 2018.   During the three months ended March 31, 2017, we entered into commodity contracts for crude oil and natural gas and did not have any open commodity derivative contracts as of December 31, 2017.