Oil Price Slide Puts The Brakes On U.S. Shale Growth
While U.S. President Donald Trump continues to call on OPEC to keep oil prices low, because “The World does not want to see, or need, higher oil prices!”, one corner of the world may need WTI prices higher than the current low $50s to keep pumping crude at the record pace it has been doing so far this year—the U.S. shale patch.
The recent price slide, by around 30 percent from four-year highs in early October, has brought down WTI Crude prices dangerously close to the wellhead breakeven prices in many U.S. shale areas.
The lower prices may lead to a slowdown in drilling activity and lower investments in the shale patch, U.S. oil industry executives and analysts say.
U.S. shale drilling may soon start to show slowdown in activity, Gary Heminger, Chairman and CEO at Marathon Petroleum Corporation, told FOX Business on Wednesday.
“If you look at the Canadian producers, when you’re looking at the wide spreads of the Western Canadian Select versus WTI, you look at some of the real cost to get some of the crude out of the Bakken because the pipelines are full – I think we are going to start seeing a slowdown in drilling if they don’t see some prices turn around,” Heminger warned, but noted that he doesn’t expect the slowdown to be “dramatic”.
The U.S. shale patch has managed to significantly cut wellhead breakeven prices since the oil price crash of 2014. Yet, its capital expenditure plans for 2019 may be derailed by $50 oil—a reality few had conceived of just two months ago, when the market was spooked by Iranian oil supply plunging to zero, or at least to much lower than the currently some 1.2 million bpd still being exported out of Iran.
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