Homepage
PR Newswire
Crude at $49: The New Reality for Big Oil Companies
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s biggest oil producers, historically resilient with their mix of energy exploration, refining and chemical manufacturing, are about to reveal how they are weathering the great oil crash.
Financial results will start trickling in Thursday for Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp., Total SA and BP Plc from a fourth quarter that saw the price of oil drop from $115 a barrel in June to below $50 a barrel.
This could be the oil bust that breaks the pattern that integration always leaves you with one or two legs to stand on.
“The issue for this group of companies is they don’t have bulletproof business models,” said Brian Hennessey, who helps manage $1.4 billion at Alpine Woods Capital Investors LLC in Purchase, New York. A 57 percent plunge in the price of oil since June “really tests your convictions.”
The industry’s stark change in fortune set off panic from corporate board rooms to drill-rig floors as companies that pump almost one-tenth of the world’s crude scramble to tighten budgets and preserve cash for dividends, buybacks and capital projects too far along to abandon.
BP froze wages, Chevron delayed its 2015 drilling budget and Shell canceled a $6.5 billion Persian Gulf investment; layoffs industrywide have topped 30,000, enough to fill almost every seat in Madison Square Garden twice.
In an early peek at what’s to come, New York-based Hess Corp., which sold its refineries and gasoline stations to focus on oil production, today reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $8 million because of lower crude prices. Adjusted earnings fell 5 cents a share short of analysts’ estimates.
Read more here
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s biggest oil producers, historically resilient with their mix of energy exploration, refining and chemical manufacturing, are about to reveal how they are weathering the great oil crash.
Financial results will start trickling in Thursday for Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp., Total SA and BP Plc from a fourth quarter that saw the price of oil drop from $115 a barrel in June to below $50 a barrel.
This could be the oil bust that breaks the pattern that integration always leaves you with one or two legs to stand on.
“The issue for this group of companies is they don’t have bulletproof business models,” said Brian Hennessey, who helps manage $1.4 billion at Alpine Woods Capital Investors LLC in Purchase, New York. A 57 percent plunge in the price of oil since June “really tests your convictions.”
The industry’s stark change in fortune set off panic from corporate board rooms to drill-rig floors as companies that pump almost one-tenth of the world’s crude scramble to tighten budgets and preserve cash for dividends, buybacks and capital projects too far along to abandon.
BP froze wages, Chevron delayed its 2015 drilling budget and Shell canceled a $6.5 billion Persian Gulf investment; layoffs industrywide have topped 30,000, enough to fill almost every seat in Madison Square Garden twice.
In an early peek at what’s to come, New York-based Hess Corp., which sold its refineries and gasoline stations to focus on oil production, today reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $8 million because of lower crude prices. Adjusted earnings fell 5 cents a share short of analysts’ estimates.
Read more here
Virtual currencies are worth virtually nothing.
http://thebluefund.blogspot.com
http://thebluefund.blogspot.com