Oil Companies Lose $1 Trillion As Prices Crash

by **GirlBye** Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:40 am

Bearish sentiment has taken hold of oil markets, with oil and gas companies having lost $1 trillion since oil began its latest slide.

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- The Wolfcamp has been one of the most important shale formations that has helped drive up oil and gas production in the Permian basin over the past decade.
- As of September 2018, the Wolfcamp has been responsible for roughly 1 million barrels of oil production per day, as well as 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (Bcf/d).

- The Wolfcamp accounts for about a third of both oil and gas output in the Permian.

Market Movers

• EQT (NYSE: EQT) was upgraded to a Buy rating by Goldman Sachs, up from Neutral, with a $23 per share price target. EQT jumped by 2 percent on the news.
• Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said that “no option has been taken off the table” in response to the bottlenecks and price crashes for oil Canada. The statement referred to mandatory production curbs, which has been floated even by Canadian oil executives. The price discount for WCS is costing Canada $80 million per day.

• Minnesota regulators reaffirmed their support for Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement, which would double the line’s capacity to 760,000 bpd. The project is expected to come online by late 2019 or early 2020 and represents Canada’s best hope of adding midstream capacity. Pipeline opponents are trying to stop the project in Minnesota.

OPEC+ could cut output in two weeks’ time, but for now, volatility is here to stay. “The name of the game in the oil market is volatility,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said at a conference in Oslo. “And with the increasing pressure of geopolitics on oil markets that we are seeing, we believe that we are entering an unprecedented period of uncertainty.”

Middle East crucial to long-term conventional growth.
Major oil-producing countries in the Middle East will add 2.7 mb/d of capacity through 2025, according to Rystad Energy. Iraq will add the most at 1.5 mb/d, and an additional 1.2 mb/d will come from the UAE, Iran, and the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Global output from conventional fields outside the Middle East peaked in 2010, Rystad says, and will fall by another 2.3 mb/d by 2025.

Hedge funds eliminate bullish bets.
The bull market has now fully unwound after hedge funds and other money managers have sold off all the bullish positions they had accumulated since the second half of 2017, according to Reuters. The last seven weeks has seen the largest liquidation of long positions since 2013. Long positions are now at their lowest level since January 2016 – a period of time that coincided with the very bottom of the oil market cycle. Fund managers now have a roughly neutral position towards the market.

Japan and South Korea could resume importing from Iran.
Reuters reports that Japan and South Korea may begin importing oil from Iran again in January, having obtained waivers from the U.S. government. The two countries had virtually eliminated imports from Iran in recent months, but now feel that they have some space for buying oil once again. The waivers last until May.

Oil majors focus on shale, but questions remain.

The world’s largest companies continue to step up their bets on short cycle shale. BP (NYSE: BP) purchased shale assets from BHP Billiton (NYSE: BBL) earlier this year for $10 billion, while Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) have all previously announced aggressive plans to scale up production in the U.S. shale.

But some of them have encountered problems, including write-downs in recent years. Medium-sized shale companies question whether or not the oil majors are equipped to perform well in short-cycle shale projects, a problem that S&P Global Platts explored.

Oil and gas companies lost $1 trillion in oil price slide. The global oil and gas sector has lost $1 trillion in value over a 40-day period since October after crude prices fell by about $20 per barrel. U.S.-listed companies in the S&P 500 shed $240 billion. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), for instance, lost $35 billion in value.

Some analysts are warning that OPEC+ will need to cut output to balance the market. “If they don’t cut, I guarantee you it’s going to be 2014 all over again,” Mike Bradley, managing director at the energy investment firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., told the Houston Chronicle.

Aramco abandons bond sale. Saudi Aramco abandoned plans to launch the world’s largest corporate bond sale, the proceeds for which would have funded a $70 billion stake in SABIC, the Saudi petrochemical firm. Previously, Aramco had considered a $40 billion bond sale for the acquisition, but has rejected the idea because of the financial disclosures that would be required for the sale, while officials are also worried about another market downturn that would affect interested in the debt sale.

UK shale gas may not be economic. Caudrilla Resources has begun drilling for shale gas in the UK after years of regulatory delays, but has struggled with stoppages after seismic activity. The FT warns that Cuadrilla has another problem: Producing shale gas in the UK may not ever be economic because of ample supplies on the continent and a growing source of supply in the form of LNG from Qatar, Norway and the UK. Beyond that, renewables are steadily falling in cost, down 50 percent since 2013.

Natural gas volatility bankrupts trader. Commodity-trading firm OptionSellers.com has fallen apart because of the violent swings in oil and natural gas prices. The firm apparently suffered a “catastrophic loss” by wrong-way bets on prices. Oil fell by 7 percent on November 13 and natural gas spiked by 18 percent on November 14. Individual investors, which apparently had to have made a minimum investment of $250,000, are set to lose their money.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Companies-Lose-1-Trillion-As-Prices-Crash.html