Oil prices are on the rise as Saudi Arabia pledges to reduce oil exports and the fact that US shale pains are becoming more obvious to the market. Halliburton (HAL) is warning that the US oil rig count is about to plateau or “peak shale” which we predicted in my recent energy webinar and for an article I wrote on the Fox Business Network website.
The Houston Chronicle reported that while oil service firm Halliburton saw its revenue jump in the second quarter as its North American hydraulic fracturing business boomed, the company expects the pace of growth to slow. Halliburton’s executive chairman Dave Lesar said that the rig count growth is showing signs of plateauing, and customers are tapping the brakes,” said Lesar, who will remain executive chairman until he retires at the end of 2018.
Marketwatch reported that shares of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC), +0.34% fell more than 3% late Monday after the oil and gas exploration and production company reported a larger-than-expected second-quarter loss. Anadarko said it lost $415 million, or 76 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with a loss of $1.36 a share in the second quarter of 2016. Adjusted for certain items, the company lost $423 million, or 77 cents a share, in the quarter. Some of this loss was due to a Colorado pipeline explosion but also due to shale oil losses.
Zero Hedge reported about Anadarko’s big miss and said that what should be “far more concerning to shale bulls (and perhaps oil bears), is that the company admitted that it can no longer support its capital spending budget, and it would cut its 2017 capital budget by $300 million, becoming the first major U.S. oil producer to do so, because of depressed oil prices. In March, Anadarko had forecast total 2017 capex of $4.5 billion to $4.7 billion, a continuation of the recent CapEx rebound which troughed in Q3 2016. In other words, this lack of investment and eventual shale pullback will reduce, once again, the outlook for US shale oil supply.
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