“U.S. production is about to have a Wile E. Coyote moment where it literally falls off a cliff. One-hundred-and-twenty-thousand barrels, maybe even next month, will drop off…. The supply and demand mismatch will probably come in 2017.”
Emad Mostaque, analyst with London-based consultancy Ecstrat
“The message from oil services firms is that shale drillers will not simply be able to turn the tap back on again once prices rise. Halliburton said on its earnings call last month that pressure pumping equipment currently sitting idle was being cannibalized for parts while the stuff still being used was being worked to its limits. And the falling backlog of uncompleted wells will also begin to make an impact.”
Liam Denning, Bloomberg View columnist
Exxon Mobil and climate change spin: “This could open up years of litigation and settlements in the same way that tobacco litigation did, also spearheaded by attorneys general. In some ways, the theory is similar — that the public was misled about something dangerous to health. Whether the same smoking guns will emerge, we don’t know yet.”
Brandon L. Garrett, professor at the University of Virginia School of Law
“”The industry is under so much pressure that you need to have a clear plan. You need to balance capital expenditure against production. Our capex in 2015 will be around 30 percent lower than in 2014.”
BG Group CEO Helge Lund [Q: how will that impact production in 3-5 years?]
“We are witnessing the total collapse of Venezuela’s economy. A contraction of these proportions might be a unique case in the last 50 years in the world. This never happens. Even Iraq’s GDP didn’t fall proportionately during the war.”
Alexander Guerrero, economist and head of the firm Techno-Economic.
“Who is the top forecaster in the oil market? The surprising answer is that nobody knows because the accuracy of predictions is never properly tracked and measured after they are made…Weather forecasts have improved enormously over the last 50 years because they have been subjected to rigorous analysis. It is far less obvious that forecasts for oil prices and other financial markets have become any better. If we demand accuracy and accountability from weather forecasters and intelligence specialists, shouldn’t we do the same from oil market forecasters?”
John Kemp, energy columnist for Reuters
“China was always seen as the kind of wonder market that was going to grow and need so much LNG that people got somewhat carried away.” Chinese LNG imports are down 3.5% this year, compared with a 10% rise in 2014.
Howard Rogers with the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and a former gas executive at BP
“We went through that four-month window where [natural gas prices] just went sideways and they didn’t stop pumping that whole time. This could be one of those ugly seasons for futures.”
Dean Hazelcorn, trader at the Coquest Inc. brokerage in Dallas.
“If we stay at this [sub-$50 oil] price longer, then a third to a quarter of the [US] industry will go bankrupt. More activity could drive production, but that takes money and the US industry doesn’t have it anymore. We don’t believe that US production can grow at $50, $60, or even $70. It will likely take $80 per barrel cash flows to return the US from decline to growth.”
Walker Moody, Managing Director of Energy Investment firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.
““I believe that arctic oil is not for today, and not for tomorrow — maybe for the day after tomorrow,”
Fatih Birol, incoming Director of the IEA
“On the face of it, the Saudi-led OPEC strategy to defend market share regardless of price appears to be having the intended effect of driving out costly, ‘inefficient’ production.”
International Energy Agency, September Oil Monthly Report
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Chukchi and Beaufort seas hold 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil. “It’s probably fair to say, this [Shell’s drilling effort in the Chukchi sea] is the most scrutinized, analyzed project — oil and gas project — probably anywhere in the world. I’m actually sure of that. We can’t afford to have a problem here.”
Marvin Odum, CEO Shell Oil Co.
“With oil down again [the day they hit $38], $20 per barrel predictions will be amplified. Remember the oil business doesn’t work at these prices.”
Analysts at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co.
“As part of our long-term plan to build a more resilient economy, create jobs and deliver secure energy supplies, we continue to back our onshore oil and gas industry and the safe development of shale gas in the U.K.”
British Energy Minister Nick Bourne
“Oil prices have so many moving parts that it’s exquisitely challenging to predict.”
Jan Stuart, Credit Suisse Group AG global energy economist [Commenting on his February forecast that oil would average around $67/barrel at year-end 2015.]
“Frack now and pay later.” Business is so tough for oilfield giants Schlumberger and Halliburton that they have come up with a new sales pitch for crude producers halting work in the worst downturn in years. It amounts to this: “frack now and pay later.” The moves by the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 oil services companies show how they are scrambling to book sales of new technologies to customers short of cash after a 60 percent slide in crude to $45 a barrel. In some cases, they are willing to take on the role of traditional lenders, like banks, which have grown reluctant to lend since the price drop that began last summer, or act like producers by taking what are essentially stakes in wells.
Terry Wade and Anna Driver, Reuters
“A steady supply of gas from Iran would not be a silver bullet for Pakistan’s energy crisis. Woeful energy sector governance is perhaps an even more debilitating factor than supply, with risks including rampant theft, poor maintenance, and transmission and distribution losses of around 20 percent.”
Oliver Coleman, deputy head of Asia programs at analytical firm Verisk Maplecroft [Note: Pakistan is the world’s sixth most populous nation with roughly 190 million inhabitants]
“Corruption in Nigeria has virtually developed into a culture where honest people are abused. The amount of money [involved] is mind-boggling but we have started getting documents where some of the senior people in government and former ministers have as much as five accounts and were moving about one million barrels per day on their own. We have started getting those documents.”
Nigeria’s President Buhari
“For a brief, brave moment this year there was a sense the worst was over for the oil sector. This week, that feeling evaporated.”
Gregory Meyer, The Financial Times, July 17, 2015
“The Economist has examined the books of the 62 largest listed exploration and production firms in America whose collective output is mainly from shale. The results suggest many first are more vulnerable than the bullish noises from their bosses suggest. There are three sets of concerns: the juicing-up of the results announced for the first quarter of 2015; high leverage; and the industry’s returns on capital.”
The Economist, July 4th issue
“The initial [round of layoffs] was an absolute bloodbath to get rid of all the people who were not core, but if things don’t improve, they’re going to have to start cutting again. If the price of oil – or when the price of oil comes back—the question is whether we are going to have sufficient folks out there to meet the increased demand [for well completion services].”
Bob Gray, a partner in the transactions practice at Mayer Brown LP
“I am now more convinced than ever that 2015 will see the peak in world crude oil production. I have very closely studied the charts of every producing nation and my prognosis is based on that study. I see many nations in steep decline and most every other nation peaking now, or in the last couple of years, or very near their peak today. These include the world’s three largest producers, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the USA.”
–Ron Patterson, peakoilbarrel.com
“New scientific models supported by the British government’s Foreign Office show that if we don’t change course, in less than three decades industrial civilization will essentially collapse due to catastrophic food shortages, triggered by a combination of climate change, water scarcity, energy crisis, and political instability.”
Nafeez Ahmed, investigative journalist
“The debt that fueled the US shale boom now threatens to be its undoing. Drillers’ debt ballooned to $235 billion at the end of the first quarter, a 16 percent increase in the past year, even as revenue shrank. The problem for shale drillers is that they’ve consistently spent money faster than they’ve made it, even when oil was $100 a barrel. The companies in the Bloomberg index spent $4.15 for every dollar earned selling oil and gas in the first quarter, up from $2.25 a year earlier, while pushing U.S. oil production to the highest in more than 30 years.
“The question is, how long do they have that they can get away with this,” The companies with the lowest credit ratings “are in survival mode.”
Thomas Watters, oil and gas credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York
“We were on stage in a panel at an Oslo energy forum and we were pressed by people in the panel to talk about our views on climate and what our positions were…On stage, Ben [van Beurden, Shell CEO], Patrick [Pouyanne, Total CEO], Eldar [Saetre, Statoil CEO] and I said we should speak with a common voice – why don’t we do that? It came about as simple as that.”
–BP CEO Bob Dudley (Reuters, June 13)
CEOs of Eni and BG joined the initiative in the weeks that followed. The bosses of ExxonMobil and Chevron opted not to join the initiative, much to the ire of their European counterparts
