Oil sector tightens belt amid jitters

Low prices, anemic profits are a drag on growth, investment

Rising production. Weakening demand. Skeptical investors.

The U.S. energy sector, while not entering a downturn, is facing an extended period of lower oil prices, lower profits and tighter spending, ultimately leading to slower growth, fewer companies and fewer jobs in Houston and across the oil and gas industry. In less than a year, the fundamentals of energy markets have shifted dramatically, from forecasts of looming shortages to worries about mounting supplies.

Even with OPEC’s agreement this week to extend production cuts into next year, oil markets remain worried about deteriorating global energy demand and record U.S. production. Crude has struggled to break out of the $50- to $60-a-barrel range, despite heightened tensions in the Middle East and the output reductions by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Oil settled at $57.34 a barrel in New York on Wednesday.

Some companies can still make money at those levels, but not enough to fuel significant expansions or satisfy increasingly impatient investors. Wall Street already has turned its back on the sector, unhappy with its lackluster returns but also increasingly focused on challenges to the industry— and earnings — from climate change, renewable energy and electric vehicles.

The S&P Energy index is

down more than 16 percent in the past 12 months even as the broader S&P 500 index has gained 9 percent.

After the the recent oil crash that ended in 2016, the door for funding oil and gas companies was wide open as banks and investors became eager to finance the land rush in West Texas’ booming Permian Basin and get in on the rebound. But the land rush proved costly, and many companies, loaded with debt, have yet to turn a meaningful profit.

“We’ve done pretty much a 180-degree turn,” said Brian Lidsky, senior director at the Austinbased research firm Drilling-info. “That door started to shut in 2018 and now the lock has been put on.”

Sentiments swing negative

Drilling for oil and gas is a capital intensive business that can burn through billions of dollars to find and develop oil and gas reservoirs, which constantly need to be replaced as they are depleted. As funding tightens, many companies will need to rein in spending, slow projects and trim payrolls. The Dallas oil company Pioneer Natural Resources, for example, recently said it would cuts capital spending more than 10 percent and eliminate one quarter of its workforce — more than 500 jobs — through layoffs and buyouts.

Since oil prices plunged late last year, industry sentiments have turned dour and spending was down in the second quarter of 2019 after three years of growth, according to new survey data from energy executives collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“Results indicate a further slowdown in the oil and gas sector, with increasing pessimism and a surge of uncertainty,” said Michael Plante, the Dallas Fed’s senior research economist.

Arguably the most ominous sign for the oil sector is growing U.S. oil output — even as dollars and drilling activity decline — against weakening global demand and rising concerns of a global economic slowdown. The U.S. Energy Department has cut its estimate for global oil demand growth in 2019 by some 300,000 barrels a day, from more than 1.5 million barrels to 1.2 million barrels daily.

Meanwhile, U.S. crude production is projected to rise by 1.4 million barrels per day this year, an increase exceeding global demand growth.

And production isn’t only growing in the United States. Norway, Brazil and Canada are on track to boost output next year, according to the International Energy Agency. Only OPEC’s agreement to maintain output reductions is keeping supplies from overwhelming demand — as they did in the last oil bust.

Shale oil firms have become almost too good at producing crude. Over the course of 2018, U.S. output surged from about 10 million barrels a day at the beginning of the year to 12 million barrels a day by the end. Estimated production has reached as high as 12.4 million barrels even as the number operating drilling rigs in Texas, which accounts for nearly half of U.S. production have fallen for months.

The oil rig count, 793 at the end of last week, is near the lowest tally since since the beginning of 2018. Companies are producing more oil with fewer rigs by drilling longer and deeper horizontal wells and fracking them more intensely.

But more oil hasn’t necessarily translated into more profits.

Dollars for discipline

Some companies, such as Houston firms ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil, have preached discipline — keeping spending in check and sending more dividends payouts to shareholders — and won over investors. But companies looking to spend to grow quickly are getting punished by Wall Street.

The share price of Occidental Petroleum, for example, has plunged 25 percent since the Houston company made public its pursuit of Anadarko Petroleum of The Woodlands, which Oxy will acquire for $38 billion. Occidental management’s rationale for the merger — which would vastly expand its holdings in the Permian and cement its position as the shale play’s top producer — has so far failed to convince investors.

“The debate has shifted from ‘How do you grow production?’ to ‘How do you grow value in shale?’ It’s shifting the DNA of the companies,” said Roger Diwan, vice president of financial services for the IHS Markit research and advisory firm.

Wildcatting days in the Permian are largely over as the industry is shifting to manufacturing mode — drilling more wells from single locations with methods that can be repeated over and over again. much like an assembly line. That hypothetically rewards the biggest players such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron, which have grown the fastest in the Permian in recent years, and makes vulnerable smaller companies without the size or capital to produce at such a scale.

“It’s a Darwinian outcome for the companies that don’t have the operational efficiencies, scale and balance sheet,” said Bill Herbert, a research analyst with Simmons Energy in Houston

With too many small players and shrinking access to capital, both the production and oilfield services sectors face consolidation, Herbert said. That’s why the merger of drilling and fracking firms C&J Energy Services and the Keane Group, both of Houston, was cheered on Wall Street earlier in June.

Watching oil prices

The U.S. benchmark for oil prices is hovering just below $60 per barrel, but even that modest amount is inflated because of heightened tensions in the Middle East and the latest OPEC deal. If war does break out, oil prices would surge.

But, more realistically, companies are planning for prices in the $50 to $55 range for the foreseeable future, analysts said. That’s high enough for a lot of companies to break even or turn a small profit, but not necessarily prosper.

Spending by oil companies has a good chance to keep falling over the next couple of years, said Colin Fenton, chairman of commodities at the Houston investment firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. He’s estimating a roughly 40 percent chance of a recession by the end of next year, which would hammer oil demand and prices.

“There’s a real risk in late 2020 and into 2021,” Fenton said. “But we’ll get through it.”