In Oil & Companies News 13/01/2016
As crude-oil prices flirt with the psychologically significant $30-a-barrel mark, Wall Street analysts are ratcheting up their pain predictions for oil producers.
The forecasts are particularly bearish for those firms already struggling to keep their heads above water given the withering decline in West Texas Intermediate futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange CLG6, -2.74% —the U.S. benchmark for crude. Prices have skidded 19% in just since the start of this year, FactSet data show.
According to consulting firm AlixPartners, 134 North American-based exploration-and-production companies are facing a combined $102 billion revenue gap against their capital-expenses and operating budgets for 2016. In other words, they could be losing nearly $2 billion a week throughout the year as prices take the elevator lower, as this chart attempts to illustrate:
In a research report obtained by MarketWatch, AlixPartners analysts, including Louis Besland, Dennis Cassidy and Bill Ebanks, describe the environment oil-and-gas companies are wrestling with as “one of the severest downturns in 30 years,” with profits expected to shrink by 20% to 30% in 2016.
The Manhattan-based consulting firm offers a five-step plan for navigating the downdraft, short of being acquired by a rival or going out of business:
1) Cut capital expenditures (capex) spend by 30% to 50%.
2) Stop or scale back share-buyback programs and dividends.
3) Divest assets to high-grade the portfolio of underperforming operating positions
4) Aggressively renegotiate contracts at price points 20% to 30% lower, often to the point of break-even.
5) Go beyond large-scale layoffs—including implementing wage freezes or in some cases, even wage cuts—to reduce labor costs
Source: AlixPartners
Much of the oil-supply glut has been fueled by the stunning growth in low-cost shale-oil producers in the U.S. But as the AlixPartners graphic shows, with oil around $30 a barrel, many oil-producing regions are operating below prices that are economically feasible:
The big losses that AlixPartners is projecting assume oil prices at $45 to $65 a barrel. A forecast from Energy Information Administration out Tuesday afternoon was more downbeat, forecasting oil sustaining an average price of $50 a barrel. But Wall Street firms are even more bearish.
So if prices stick around current levels, the pain could be significantly worse.
Source: MarketWatch