{"id":14240,"date":"2015-11-10T07:09:56","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T12:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14240"},"modified":"2015-11-10T07:09:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T12:09:56","slug":"political-climate-shifting-against-the-oil-and-gas-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14240","title":{"rendered":"Political Climate Shifting Against The Oil And Gas Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/11\/political-climate-shifting-against-the-oil-and-gas-industry.html\" target=\"_blank\">Political Climate Shifting Against The Oil And Gas Industry<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\">Oil and gas companies have had a tough time over the past year trying to weather the storm of falling oil prices. But the political and financial winds are moving in the wrong direction for the industry, raising more \u201cabove ground\u201d problems at a time that they can ill-afford it.<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Drilling oil and gas wells requires a lot of money. For companies that have seen their revenues vanish because of collapsing oil prices, access to credit is obviously critically important. But U.S. financial regulators are growing concerned about a pile of energy debt that is deteriorating in quality. A\u00a0<a title=\"report\" href=\"http:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/newsevents\/press\/bcreg\/20151105a.htm\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a>from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve singled out the oil and gas sector when it concluded that credit risk was rising across the United States.<\/p>\n<p>For example, there is at least $34.2 billion in loans in the banking sector that have a credit rating suggesting they are \u201csubstandard,\u201d \u201cdoubtful,\u201d or \u201closs.\u201d That figure is up from just $6.9 billion in 2014. Put another way, about 12 percent of all loans to oil and gas companies are rated \u201csubstandard\u201d or worse.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Related:&amp;nbsp;Canada\u2019s Oil Sector Cautiously Optimistic About Late 2016 Recovery\" href=\"http:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Crude-Oil\/Canadas-Oil-Sector-Cautiously-Optimistic-About-Late-2016-Recovery.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Related:\u00a0Canada\u2019s Oil Sector Cautiously Optimistic About Late 2016 Recovery<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Low oil prices are undermining the ability of some companies to pay back their debt. However,\u00a0<a title=\"increased oversight\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/07774f16-840b-11e5-8e80-1574112844fd.html#axzz3qibsgytp\" target=\"_blank\">increased oversight<\/a>\u00a0from banking regulators could force banks to take corrective measures, which could mean reducing their exposure to high-risk energy debt. Such a development does not bode well for oil and gas drillers. Tighter credit conditions \u2013 which could also be impacted by a pending rate increase by the Federal Reserve in December \u2013 will make drilling more expensive.<\/p>\n<p>In the political arena, things are not any better, with last week being a particularly rough one for the energy sector.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Political Climate Shifting Against The Oil And Gas Industry Oil and gas companies have had a tough time over the past year trying to weather the storm of falling oil prices. But the political and financial winds are moving in the wrong direction for the industry, raising more \u201cabove ground\u201d problems at a time that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[7223,141,195,327,1729,1775,5510],"class_list":["post-14240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-cheap-credit","tag-climate-change","tag-debt","tag-fossil-fuel-industry","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-washingtons-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14241,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14240\/revisions\/14241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}