February 17, 2015
by
Noah Buhayar and Zain Shauk
(Bloomberg) -- Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.(click here) exited a $3.7 billion investment in Exxon Mobil Corp. amid a
slump in oil prices.
Crude has fallen by about half since June as U.S. production surged and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries resisted output cuts. The decline has ravaged oil company profits and forced major producers and drillers to slash spending and fire thousands of workers.
Berkshire has “not really had the hot hand in energy,” Fadel Gheit, an analyst for Oppenheimer & Co. in New York, said in a phone interview. “The whole energy sector obviously is now traded in completely different circumstances than they were only a year ago....
Just a little over extended, huh? There will be an income tax break this year. The real picture though is that for decades oil was the gift that kept giving. So, the investment many, many years ago paid off for a long time.
February 16, 2015
By John Kemp
...The number of rigs drilling for oil in the United Statesdeclined by another 84 last week, (click here) according to oil field services company Baker Hughes.
The oil-directed rig count has now fallen by a total of 553, or 34 percent, since early October, the fastest decline since 1986.
Some analysts have questioned whether the decline in rig counts will really result in a slowdown in oil output.
The most basic lower rigs, those with the lowest horsepower and depth ratings, capable only of drilling vertically, are likely to be idled first, leaving more powerful units with horizontal capability still working.
And drilling will pull back from speculative frontier areas to concentrate on the most productive parts of well-established plays to maximise new output per well drilled.
But however the data is analysed a broad-based slowdown in drilling is now occurring across the entire U.S. shale sector.
Even get the feeling as though oil was never really manged so much as exploited?
...BROAD SLOWDOWN
In two of the Big Three shale plays, Williston and Permian basins, the number of rigs drilling for oil has fallen by 34 percent, exactly in line with the national average.
Only the Eagle Ford play, where the rig count is down 28 percent, shows a slightly smaller-than-average percentage decline....
In terms of rig capability, the number of vertical rigs is down by 43 percent and the number of directional rigs is down by almost 41 percent. (Directional rigs can drill slanted wells but not fully horizontal ones.)...
Crude has fallen by about half since June as U.S. production surged and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries resisted output cuts. The decline has ravaged oil company profits and forced major producers and drillers to slash spending and fire thousands of workers.
Berkshire has “not really had the hot hand in energy,” Fadel Gheit, an analyst for Oppenheimer & Co. in New York, said in a phone interview. “The whole energy sector obviously is now traded in completely different circumstances than they were only a year ago....
Just a little over extended, huh? There will be an income tax break this year. The real picture though is that for decades oil was the gift that kept giving. So, the investment many, many years ago paid off for a long time.
February 16, 2015
By John Kemp
...The number of rigs drilling for oil in the United Statesdeclined by another 84 last week, (click here) according to oil field services company Baker Hughes.
The oil-directed rig count has now fallen by a total of 553, or 34 percent, since early October, the fastest decline since 1986.
Some analysts have questioned whether the decline in rig counts will really result in a slowdown in oil output.
The most basic lower rigs, those with the lowest horsepower and depth ratings, capable only of drilling vertically, are likely to be idled first, leaving more powerful units with horizontal capability still working.
And drilling will pull back from speculative frontier areas to concentrate on the most productive parts of well-established plays to maximise new output per well drilled.
But however the data is analysed a broad-based slowdown in drilling is now occurring across the entire U.S. shale sector.
Even get the feeling as though oil was never really manged so much as exploited?
...BROAD SLOWDOWN
In two of the Big Three shale plays, Williston and Permian basins, the number of rigs drilling for oil has fallen by 34 percent, exactly in line with the national average.
Only the Eagle Ford play, where the rig count is down 28 percent, shows a slightly smaller-than-average percentage decline....
In terms of rig capability, the number of vertical rigs is down by 43 percent and the number of directional rigs is down by almost 41 percent. (Directional rigs can drill slanted wells but not fully horizontal ones.)...
