Oil Companies Need Prices to Keep Rising Past $50 a Barrel
LONDON—A rally that pushed international crude-oil prices above $50 a barrel Thursday is a welcome sign for many energy companies but not enough to kick-start an industry in the midst of a two-year slump, executives said.
“We’re in a little bit of an upswing at the moment and everybody’s got a smile on their face because we might be at $50 a barrel,” said Tony Durrant, chief executive of Premier Oil PLC, a British oil company with operations from the North Sea to the Falkland Islands.
But, Mr. Durrant said in an interview Thursday, “every day of every week I’m talking to our joint venture partners around the world and I hear people still canceling projects.”
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Oil prices remain far below the $100-a-barrel area that energy companies had become accustomed to during a nearly decadelong run that ended in 2014, when a global oversupply of crude sent prices skittering down to as low as $27 a barrel in January. On Thursday, Brent crude, the international benchmark, breached $50 a barrel for the first time in six weeks and, along with the U.S. benchmark, entered bull-market territory.
The rebound isn’t enough yet to solve the problems of even the biggest and most resilient oil companies.
It won’t be until next year that BP PLC plans to generate enough cash to be cash-flow neutral—meaning it can cover its capital spending and dividend payouts—with oil prices at $50 to $55 a barrel, even after a series of huge cost cuts. Exxon Mobil Corp. has said it would be in a similar position next year at $40 to $80 a barrel and Chevron Corp. has said it would balance its cash generation and spending at $52 a barrel next year—after as much as $5 billion in asset sales.
As oil crosses back into $50 territory, some American shale producers with strong balance sheets are starting to drill again. For instance, Apache Corp. , based in Houston, set its budget for 2016 assuming an average oil price of $35 a barrel, but higher prices in recent months have allowed it to add a rig in Texas and keep two drilling in the North Sea that it was planning to release.
But Dave Hager, chief executive of Devon Energy Corp. , said many U.S. producers need oil to hit $60.
“I don’t think you can generalize and say that $50 oil would signal a strong recovery,” he said in a recent interview. “There are many areas that are not as strong in economics.”
Wood Mackenzie is forecasting that oil prices will average $55 a barrel in 2017, as long as demand for oil holds up and U.S. production doesn’t kick back in. The Scottish energy consultancy said oil companies have cut around $1 trillion of capital investment in new oil and gas projects from the shale fields of Texas to oil deposits in the North Sea from 2015 to 2020.
For the largest companies, the uptick to $50 a barrel doesn’t help much in their quest to maintain their dividend payouts to investors this year.
The giant businesses don’t offer investors compelling growth prospects as they struggle to replace the millions of barrels they pump each year, making fat dividends an important selling point for investors. For many retirees who buy stocks directly or through pension funds, the regular payouts are a key source of income.
In June, when oil prices were around $50 a barrel, Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced new spending cuts to keep up its dividend payments, adhering to what Chief Executive Ben van Beurden called a “lower forever mind-set.” Shell is planning around prices in the low $40s this year, rising to $50 in 2017 and the mid-$60s in 2018.
The factors driving the market rally include the shrinking of a massive oil and gasoline glut. Last week, the International Energy Agency said crude-oil production would fall behind consumption for the first time in years.
On Wednesday the U.S. Energy Information Administration said U.S. crude inventories contracted by 2.7 million barrels last week while gasoline stocks fell by 2.2 million barrels.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude-oil exporter, has signaled in recent days that it was willing to cooperate with other big producers inside and outside of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a 14-nation cartel the kingdom is part of.
Energy companies have expressed more optimism about 2017.
The volatile recovery ties in with the view that many big oil companies have touted over the last few months: that the massive oversupply that sent prices crashing would fade in the second half of the year, allowing the market to tighten as storage tanks are gradually drained.
How fast that ultimately happens is crucial for big oil companies. BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley, who coined the phrase “lower for longer” about oil prices, said last month he is no longer “as pessimistic as some.”
Earlier this week, Robin Watson, CEO of oil-services company Wood Group PLC, said the end of low oil prices could be in sight.
“It certainly feels like we’re around the bottom,” he said in an interview.
—Bradley Olson in Houston contributed to this article.
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