*US shale firms cut budgets as oil-price outlook dims
Oil producers and their suppliers are cutting budgets, staffs and production goals amid a growing consensus of forecasts that oil and gas prices will stay low for several years. The US has 904 working rigs, down 14 per cent from a year ago, and even that is probably too many, estimated Harold Hamm, chief executive of shale producer Continental Resources, which has reduced the number of rigs at work.
Bankruptcy filings by US energy producers through mid-august this year have nearly matched the total for the whole of 2018. A stock index of oil and gas producers hit an all-time low in August, a sign investors are expecting more trouble ahead.
“You’re going to see activity drop across the industry,” Earl Reynolds, CEO of Chaparral Energy, said at the Enercom oil and gas conference.
The Oklahoma energy firm has slashed its workforce by nearly a quarter, trimmed its spending plan by 5 per cent
A SLOWING OIL INDUSTRY COULD WEIGH ON THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY. THE BOOM IN SHALE OIL OUTPUT ADDED ABOUT 1 PER CENT TO US GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT, OR 10 PER CENT OF GROWTH
, and agreed to sell its headquarters and use some of the proceeds to reduce debt.
Investment bank Cowen & Co estimated last month that oil-and-gas producers spent 56 per cent of their 2019 budgets through June, based on its review of 48 US companies. It expects total spending this year to fall 11 per cent over last year, based on proposed budgets.
The slowdown in drilling is spurring cost-cutting in oilfield services, including staff cuts and restructurings at top firms Schlumberger and Halliburton Co. Schlumberger plans a write-down yet to be determined this quarter, noting its results in North America have been “under significant pressure,” CEO Olivier Le Peuch said.
Halliburton is paring its North American workforce by 8 per cent because of customer spending cuts, and National Oilwell Varco recently offered buyouts to its US workers.
“The service sector I think is going to be flat,” said Superior Drilling Services CEO Troy Meier, whose firm cancelled plans to add new machinery.
Such signs of a downturn come as the shale sector had just started generating the cash flow long demanded by investors, who have grown weary of drilling expansions without returns. Last quarter, a group of 29 top publiclytraded producers generated more in cash — $26 million — than it spent on drilling and dividends, according to Morningstar data provided by the Sightline Institute and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. A year earlier, the same group had spent $2.4 billion more than it generated.
Despite that progress, many small to mid-sized shale firms are now pulling back on production targets amid the gloomy price projections.
A slowing oil industry could weigh on the United States economy. The boom in shale oil output added about 1 per cent to US gross domestic product, or 10 per cent of growth, between 2010 to 2015, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. In Texas, the centre of shale oil production, energy employment dipped 1.8 per cent in the first six months of 2019, according to the Dallas Fed. New drilling permits in the state fell 21 per cent in July compared with the same month last year, according to state data.
Any broader economic impact, however, could be limited by the massive investments in shale drilling by some of the world’s biggest oil firms — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP PLC. Even as small and mid-sized firms dial back, the majors continue to pour billions of dollars into years-long shale drilling plans. They have argued their integrated well-torefinery networks allow them to control costs enough to withstand a sustained period of low prices.
Chevron has focused much of its production growth plans on shale, and CEO Michael Wirth has called its Permian Basin holdings in West Texas and eastern New Mexico the “highest return use of our dollars.”
Exxon CEO Darren Woods told a Barclays energy conference on September 4 that the company continues to take the long view.
“The way we look at the business is tied to some very basic fundamentals that haven’t changed for decades, if not hundreds of years,” he said, noting it took oil a century to replace coal as the world’s dominant energy source. Exxon has estimated it can earn a double-digit return in the Permian Basin even if oil falls to $35 a barrel.