Which producers will shut in first?

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Hindsight is 20/20, that’s why they don’t make glasses for your butt.

[cbrasher1 + 272]

on topic this is what I predict.  The good news is we have 2 4 well pads to frac for Oxy, so maybe 30-45 days.  XTO just started up a frac job, not sure if there are any more lined up afterwards.  This idea of 10-15 mbpd is not going to help when the consumption is 20-30 mbpd less, so they will have their little meeting, no one will agree due to everyone attempting to save face, news will come of a failed agreement, oil drops to 15-20, then that pay cut I had to take will be more meaningless after this job cause I will be sent home because everything will come to a hault as many others have before me.  Even if an agreement is made, the destruction of consumption is done and it will take time to get sorted out, especially since dumbasses won't stay home!!!  April is going to be ugly, and that's no april fools!

Edited April 4, 2020 by cbrasher1

[BLA + 1,666]

On 4/4/2020 at 5:45 AM, Dan Clemmensen said:

South Korea was ready for this. They had a plan in place and they executed it aggressively and successfully. A few other smaller Asian countries did pretty well also. In all cases it was because they screwed up so badly responding to SARS, so they learned the hard way, and that led them to treat their planning and execution seriously. The rest of us only learned the SARS lesson at one remove, so we gradually lost interest in keeping our guard up. In my opinion the biggest US failure was in not following South Korea's lead immediately.

We tried to follow South Korea but .  .  .  .  failed miserably

WE DID NOT FOLLOW SOUTH KOREA IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE THE CDC INSISTED THEY DEVELOP , DISTRIBUTE AND PROCESS THE TEST KITS.  

They struck out on all three counts.  The U.S. lost 3 to 4 critical weeks.

Also, South Korea and other South Asian countries implemented the Hydroxychloroquine therapy early on.

In  the U.S. early days of HCQ the Media and Democratic governors panned Trump's mention of HCQ as snake oil.  What is worse, being late to the game there now is very little supply available.

Novartis "hopes" to start U.S.  production by the end of April.  Little chance of that happening. 

No country was ready for this maybe . But the $12 Billion/year CDC failed by all accounts.  

Also, CDC told the U.S. masks don't help and were a waste of time.  Now they did a 180° turn and want us to cover our mouths in public.

Other countries do not have bloated health agencies and do not make excuses for them when they fail.

You can repeat the standard colloquialisms all day long :

" nobody saw this coming "

" there is plenty of blame to go around "

" hindsight is 20/20 "

BUT . . . . WHAT DO WE SPEND $12 BILLION A YEAR ON THE CDC FOR ?  

Edited April 5, 2020 by BLA

[BLA + 1,666]

7 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

In fairness Dan that is a good point and I do agree, Sars was a big wake up call for Asia and the rest of the world should’ve followed suit.

i should’ve said no Western country

SARS was mostly limited to North Eastern China.  Little infection elsewhere.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

9 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

In fairness Dan that is a good point and I do agree, Sars was a big wake up call for Asia and the rest of the world should’ve followed suit.

i should’ve said no Western country

True in general, slightly wrong in detail. If you look at cases per million population and graph starting when each countyr hits 1 case per million, then except for Spain, all countries did/are doing better than the US. Even this is unfair, because almost all of those countries got hit earlier than the US, so we had time to prepare and we squandered it. Even this is not accurate, because the data is skewed by the amount of testing each country does, as the US did not do enough testing.  Here is the data:  https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

Incidentally, it is almost certain that the situation in India will be the biggest Covid-19 tragedy, much worse than China or the US and probably worse than everywhere else put together. This is sadly very on-topic for this  forum. India has a low per capita GDP, but the have a whole lot of capitas, and they have just (tried to) go into lockdown. They have cancelled forward orders for crude citing Force Majuer, and any reasonable model will show that it will be a long time before they can get their economy restarted. I do not know how to evaluate this in terms of millions of bbl/day, but it won't be pretty. On the human side, it will be horrible. A sufficient portion of the populace lives at a low enough income level that a lockdown will cause actual starvation.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

11 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Hindsight is 20/20, that’s why they don’t make glasses for your butt.

Brown eye only needs a monocle

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

4 hours ago, BLA said:

SARS was mostly limited to North Eastern China.  Little infection elsewhere.

Toronto Canada had a decent sized outbreak. Thankfully it was well contained using true quarantine not self-isolation. 

[John Foote + 1,135]

12 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

In fairness Dan that is a good point and I do agree, Sars was a big wake up call for Asia and the rest of the world should’ve followed suit.

i should’ve said no Western country

Georgia oddly enough is doing quite well. If they could deal with Russia invading in '08, their almost complete economic collapse in the 90s, this is comparatively easy. 

Western Germany is doing well considering their porous border and proximity to France and a couple of super spreaders from church services on the border with France. Taiwan was on it within hours. S. Korea is impressive because although they initially started poorly, again with a few super spreaders, with at least one who knew they had symptoms. 

Where I work. By mid-Feb recalled workers overseas and insisted on 14 day quarantine, fully paid, no PTO involved. One person at my site tested posted, site closed for the day even though they hadn't been on site in 10 days, clean everything, everyone that person contacted was contacted, etc.. What to do is established. The will to do is quite variable. I see some private business protecting assets, and yes, still up and making products. Most companies don't have the assets to do this. 

Clearly older are at higher risk, but the fundamental kicker seems to be combining with a pre-existing health issues. Diabetes is rampant in the USA, hypertension, and variety of other cardiac issues. Heck, obesity is an issue, and what percentage of the USA falls into that? From an biological evolutionary perspective, culling the herd if we let it run its course.  But is that what we are?

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

It’s not what we are, or what we think we are as civilised human beings. However if push ever came to shove it is exactly that of culling  the herd and survival of the fittest.

civilisation has a very thin veneer!

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

1 hour ago, John Foote said:

Georgia oddly enough is doing quite well. If they could deal with Russia invading in '08, their almost complete economic collapse in the 90s, this is comparatively easy. 

 

Sadly, we don't really know how well some countries are doing. The current metric is "confirmed cases", but a country with weak testing, (probably most African countries) or a non-transparent reporting system (China?, Russia?) or a chaotic piecemeal reporting system (USA) will provide numbers that are hard to compare with each other. It's likely that death counts are a bit more consistent, but they suffer some of the same problems. All of this is relevant, because it makes it harder to predict when lockdowns are likely to start, when their economies are likely to restart, and what their demand for crude is likely to be when restart occurs.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

^

It's not the above that worries me; it's the fact that global data-sharing is almost nonexistent and that's where the answer probably lies. 

For example, this virus enters via the ACE-2 (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2) receptor. ACE-I antihypertensive drugs are among the most common in the world, mostly made in China, by the way. Are older males taking ACE-Inhibitors more or less likely to have superinfection and cytokine storms? Blood type A is more likely to get Influenza and have complications. Is this the case here? Why are old men with waning immune systems having cytokine storms while young men with robust immune system not getting them as often? Everyone in every country with the expertise has looked at the viral genome; is it from nature or have viron genomic sequences been added? 

So far, this has been a real goat-f**k, sorry to say, and I'm not sure that's anyone's fault but President Xi. His government misled the world about infectivity, mortality, morbidity, etc, and then  . . . .  oh well. 

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

Given sagging demand, the growing scarcity of oil storage and declining production from financially strapped upstream firms, IHS Markit predicts that up to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of world oil production will be cut or shut-in until June of this year.

That would equate to nearly 10 percent of total daily global oil output for 2019, based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s reported 100.6 million-bpd figure for the year.

“If oil cannot be sold or stored, it cannot be produced,” IHS Markit stated Tuesday in a written statement emailed to Rigzone. “Transportation constraints and lack of access to every available tank will prevent the utmost maximum level of storage capacity being reached.”

IHS Markit also reported that it anticipates oil demand in the second quarter of 2020 to be 16.4 million bpd lower than the year-ago level, with a projected April decline of approximately 20 million bpd. As oil storage facilities near capacity, the supply surplus cannot exceed the practical limit of 1.2 billion barrels of capacity that was available as of early First Quarter 2020, the information services firm pointed out.

To put the estimated 16.4 million-bpd oil second-quarter oil demand decrease year-on-year into perspective, IHS Markit Vice President Aaron Brady noted that it is more than six times greater than the “record drop” that occurred in the first quarter of 2009 during the Great Recession.

“Quite simply, global production has been on a pace to exceed available storage capacity,” remarked Jim Burkhard, IHS Markit’s vice president and head of oil markets. “Something has to give. And it will. Signs point to a forced 10 million barrels per day cut in world oil production.”

When might the volume of forced shut-in oil production begin to abate? IHS Markit’s currently assumes that it will start to ease in approximately the middle of this year. In the meantime, the company predicts that every region worldwide will experience an oil production decline during the second quarter – with OPEC member countries, Russia and the United States among the hardest-hit in terms of volume.

IHS Markit cautioned that its outlook presumes that a discussion will occur among international players to restrain oil output but that no deal will materialize. The firm added that some local or regional governments may still act on their own accord to address production and storage challenges. It cited the production curbs that the Canadian province of Alberta instituted in late-2018 as a potential model for combating low prices and storage constraints.

“If there is no international agreement to curtail oil production then brutal unadulterated market forces will bring the oil market into balance,” stated Burkhard. “The laws of supply and demand are fierce in extreme conditions.”

Following the “extreme, light-speed rebalancing of the oil market” that is underway, significant changes in some countries’ production levels should emerge – particularly next year if oil demand returns to a growth mode, IHS Markit contends. In that scenario, the firm anticipates U.S. crude production will be approximately 8.8 million bpd by the fourth quarter of 2021 – nearly 32 percent lower than the figure for the first quarter of 2020. Also, it foresees a much less dramatic impact to Saudi and Russian output in that time frame. The company stated that, compared to the first quarter of this year, Saudi output should be 1.8 million bpd higher and Russian output “just slightly lower” by the final quarter of 2021.

“Saudi Arabia and Russia are better positioned in a low-price environment to maintain or even increase production over the next two years compared to the United States,” IHS Markit Executive Director Bhushan Bahree explained. “Their systems depend on conventional production, which has much lower decline rates compared to U.S. tight oil. A decline in upstream investment will impact short-term production capacity to a much lesser degree than in the United States.”

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

 

BUT . . . . WHAT DO WE SPEND $12 BILLION A YEAR ON THE CDC FOR ?  
 

I get your point. My point is let’s sort this out AFTER we have resolved this pandemic.

[BLA + 1,666]

6 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

 

BUT . . . . WHAT DO WE SPEND $12 BILLION A YEAR ON THE CDC FOR ?  
 

I get your point. My point is let’s sort this out AFTER we have resolved this pandemic.

I agree with you . You are correct.

I do take offense of those living in fantasy land and defend either the Chinese  cover-up or  the CDC performance . Both screwed up.  It's the Chinese nature , it's apparently what the CDC has become. 

I don't exactly know why but some have some kind of personal attachment or connection to the CDC and are in denile of their incompetence.  That incompetence WITH A $12 Billion a year budget. That's scary. 

When somebody points out the facts to them they resort to childish name calling, critique composition and then they claim they have a social flaw in that , " I can't keep quiet when I know something is untrue ". So ultratruistic. My hero.

If we can't call out the CDC for what they are or are not the problem never gets fixed.  

 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by BLA

[Philip Keating + 1]

Russia and Saudi Arabia have zero motivation to cut oil production at the moment. It would not take long to inflict carnage on the US shale industry. Its not true to say the bigger companies will just buy the smaller and they will just bounce back as wall street has long since lost its love affair with US shale, so there will be no appetite for financing acquisitions  If this goes on too long the large players will be glad to survive nothing more. It is likely there will be no agreement until US producers have suffered sufficiently for them to be willing to accept significant cuts. Other counties are looking for the US to join in with supply/demand balancing. The US will not be able to make a cut stick without fairly robust measures to control independent companies. So its a process. Pain and suffering comes first then a willingness to accept robust controls, then a deal can be struck between all parties. The backdrop to the current crisis is the US continued ramping up of production against restrain showed by Opec and Russia. Less powerful nations dont get many opportunities to turn the table on the US if anyone thinks that Russia and Saudi Arabia will not extract maximum value out of this crisis they are deluding themselves.  A deal will be done that includes the US and Canada but the carnage will continue for the time being.

[wrs + 893]

23 minutes ago, Philip Keating said:

Russia and Saudi Arabia have zero motivation to cut oil production at the moment. It would not take long to inflict carnage on the US shale industry. Its not true to say the bigger companies will just buy the smaller and they will just bounce back as wall street has long since lost its love affair with US shale, so there will be no appetite for financing acquisitions  If this goes on too long the large players will be glad to survive nothing more. It is likely there will be no agreement until US producers have suffered sufficiently for them to be willing to accept significant cuts. Other counties are looking for the US to join in with supply/demand balancing. The US will not be able to make a cut stick without fairly robust measures to control independent companies. So its a process. Pain and suffering comes first then a willingness to accept robust controls, then a deal can be struck between all parties. The backdrop to the current crisis is the US continued ramping up of production against restrain showed by Opec and Russia. Less powerful nations dont get many opportunities to turn the table on the US if anyone thinks that Russia and Saudi Arabia will not extract maximum value out of this crisis they are deluding themselves.  A deal will be done that includes the US and Canada but the carnage will continue for the time being.

If KSA thinks they will get away with it they are deluding themselves.  KSA is dead meat without the US and Russia doesn't have the ability to strike at the US nor any interest in protecting KSA.  They are the problem, Putin has already made that clear.  MBS is not going to live too long IMO.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Keep in mind that the pain of this ‘price war’ is being felt by many other countries, besides the US, whose economies are highly dependent on oil.

Things were not great before the price war, but they were ticking along. Those countries whose economies are going bankrupt may be annoyed at the US (although many will understand the difference between national oil companies and free market publicly owned companies), but they all know that KSA ‘pulled the trigger’.

Saudi is losing any goodwill held by others towards them, rapidly.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Perhaps the smart thing to do is for everyone to sanction KSA and refuse to buy their oil...this is a two way street, isn’t it?

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

3 hours ago, Philip Keating said:

Russia and Saudi Arabia have zero motivation to cut oil production at the moment. It would not take long to inflict carnage on the US shale industry.

Russia and Saudi Arabia have essentially nothing whatsoever to do with the need to curtail production. Global production must be curtailed because of the demand collapse. Saudi is pretending that they have some control of this, but they don't. By listening to them we are letting them control the agenda. Their greatest fear is that the world will ignore them, and that's what we should do.  Saudi and to a lesser extent Russia are like kids on the beach threatening to kick down other kid's sand castles, while ignoring the oncoming covid-19 tsunami. When storage fills up, everyone will be physically forced to curtail production, and prices will crash. Period. No matter what OPEC+ says or does. The longer producers wait, the more abrupt the shutdown will be. Once demand eventually resumes, production must lag until at least the most expensive storage is emptied, because that oil will cost too much to keep in storage. So, expect prices to remain depressed for a long time.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

On 4/3/2020 at 10:28 AM, Gerry Maddoux said:

Speaking of that, why has the United States government allowed China to fire one of these zoonotic viruses at us every year for the last twenty? This is a form of biologic warfare. If they had fired on a ship and cost twenty lives we'd have bombed them into oblivion, but they fire one of these viruses at us and we blame the CDC, even though said agency had no say-so in where the testing kits were made, couldn't raise a voice against the bioterrorism that was being waged under the guise of wet markets and "Level 4 BIOSAFETY Laboratories." What the hell are we all thinking? Why are we turning on our own wonderful institutions when we should be calling for the complete and utter isolation of communist china?

Ward, I'm not a confrontational person, believe it or not. I am a serious man, but also perhaps the world's greatest proponent for the weak and vulnerable, and believe in my heart that if we can't take care of the weakest amongst us, we are nothing. I have watched through my entire career in medicine as the United States monetized medicine--testing the insured to death and not testing the uninsured at all. I don't understand that. I don't understand why, as the world's (formerly) wealthiest nation we don't understand that health is to be treasured, and that we don't outsource everything having to do with health to a country that clearly loathes us. Why didn't you raise a voice against the CDC a year ago? Why didn't I? Why don't we now, as a nation, support the very institution that washes our lettuce and does the best they can when Hitler comes to our shores?

A year ago I had respect for the CDC. I didn't know how far they'd fallen. I surmised they'd become infected with the same bureaucracy bungling that eventually destroys all large entities. These guys did good at malaria eradication in the south. That's where they started and that's when they were at their best. It is oddly karma that this disease seems to respond to anti malaria treatments. If you'll recall, I was one of the voices demanding that our CDC be given access to Wuhan. Perhaps if they had, they wouldn't have required a cranial rectumectomy to do their jobs. You claim they're afraid, I say they weren't afraid enough! 

[BLA + 1,666]

3 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

A year ago I had respect for the CDC. I didn't know how far they'd fallen. I surmised they'd become infected with the same bureaucracy bungling that eventually destroys all large entities. These guys did good at malaria eradication in the south. That's where they started and that's when they were at their best. It is oddly karma that this disease seems to respond to anti malaria treatments. If you'll recall, I was one of the voices demanding that our CDC be given access to Wuhan. Perhaps if they had, they wouldn't have required a cranial rectumectomy to do their jobs. You claim they're afraid, I say they weren't afraid enough! 

CDC has a 3 person liaison office in Beijing .  They asked for data .  The CCP refused their request.  

WHO , a Chinese lapdog wasn't even allowed into Wuhan until well into March. They were limited to where they could go.  Only where the CCP wanted them to go. 

The day after China expelled the U.S. journalist they announced no new cases in Wuhan. 

Edited April 6, 2020 by BLA

[BLA + 1,666]

14 hours ago, BLA said:

CDC has a 3 person liaison office in Beijing .  They asked for data .  The CCP refused their request.  

WHO , a Chinese lapdog wasn't even allowed into Wuhan until well into March. They were limited to where they could go.  Only where the CCP wanted them to go. 

The day after China expelled the U.S. journalist they announced no new cases in Wuhan. 

Washington Post on CDC

https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com%2fopinions%2fwhatever-happened-to-the-cdc%2f2020%2f04%2f03%2fb39f30e0-75d0-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html%3foutputType%3damp

[U_P + 22]

Offshore Shut-Ins Not So Simple

Lower oil prices have prompted a debate about how much production might have to be shut in at offshore basins around the world in order to stem oil companies’ financial losses. But depending where you are, this debate ranges from how production cuts might be achieved to whether they are even necessary. Over in the North Sea region, Norway said in early April it would be willing to join a coordinated global effort by Opec and non-Opec states to cut oil production to try to help eliminate a massive supply surplus and boost prices. Norway’s Petroleum and Energy Minister Tina Bru confirmed that Oslo was engaged in “a dialogue with key stakeholders, including other producing countries.” But she did not elaborate on the potential size of the output curb or how it might be achieved. In a sign of the unprecedented scale of the proposed cuts and number of potential participants, it is understood the UK has also been invited to take part in a potential Opec-plus effort. The more mature UK offshore basin is home to hundreds of marginal, late-life production facilities with higher operating costs. “So, if the low oil price continues then the cessation of production dates will be brought closer. That’s the key issue,” said Alex Kemp, professor of petroleum economics at the University of Aberdeen. UK independent Enquest recently opted to shutter two fields -- Heather and Thistle -- rather than return them to production following an extended period of maintenance. Moreover, an outbreak of the coronavirus in either the UK offshore or the Norwegian Continental Shelf could result in shut-ins if a significant number of workers were quarantined. North Sea operators are currently de-manning platforms to levels that allow safe operations but also reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading. Before Norway’s announcement, North Sea output looked set to bounce this year, amid delays to a major maintenance program at the UK's Forties Pipeline System and a ramp-up of output at Norway's giant Johan Sverdrup field. A recent Rystad Energy forecast saw North Sea output rising to more than 3 million barrels per day in July 2020. The projection was based on the postponement of the Forties shutdown from June until at least August, in order to avoid bringing together large numbers of workers, and Equinor’s plan to lift Phase 1 output at Johan Sverdrup. Improvements in the efficiency of North Sea producers following the 2014-16 oil price downturn mean that individual fields and companies “are able to withstand price shocks to a greater extent," said Ross Dornan, head of market intelligence at trade group Oil & Gas UK (OGUK). At $25 per barrel, less than 25% of UK offshore fields will be in a cash loss position in terms of operating costs. The UK average has fallen to just over $15/bbl, although the most expensive asset costs around $64/bbl. However, analysis by Westwood Energy suggests that if oil gets back below $27/bbl, UK offshore output will not generate enough revenue to cover both operating costs and planned capital spending this year. By comparison, Norway’s less mature offshore region can still cover operating and capital costs in 2020 even at a price below $20/bbl. Even so, despite low opex and capex costs, this oil will struggle to find a home. The coronavirus outbreak and measures taken to prevent its spread also pose a threat to North Sea output. In the UK, OGUK estimates that offshore manning levels have fallen below 9,000 people, and that they are still going down, from a normal level of roughly 12,000-plus. The group is currently pushing for the UK government to validate an antibody finger-prick blood test to give workers before they travel offshore. On the supply chain side, there have been problems related to police restrictions on moving people and equipment around, and in some cases delays to the delivery of equipment coming from overseas, including from Italy -- which has been severely affected by coronavirus. Meanwhile, the number of cases is growing. Although not confirmed as Covid-19, an offshore contractor working for services company Stork was recently airlifted from Total’s Elgin platform after showing symptoms of the virus before dying. Independent operator Spirit Energy has also had to temporarily shut in production at its UK Chestnut field after a second worker on the field’s floating production unit showed symptoms of Covid-19. Elsewhere around the world, there is likely to be resistance to production shut-ins. In the US Gulf of Mexico, for example, federal officials have reportedly discussed forcing operators to shut production as confirmed cases of the virus in the region soared last week to at least 14 across five different offshore production and drilling facilities. But industry insiders are skeptical that a forced shutdown of production will take place, either as a response to the ongoing health crisis or as a bargaining chip with Opec. For some Gulf operators, shutting in output would deprive them of barrels that are still cash-flow positive, even if just barely. A source at one deepwater operator said: “In a perfect world, we'd shut in production due to the low prices.” But with active drilling contracts soaking up cash, operators need the low-cost production coming from the Gulf to help carry expenses. “The alternative is to just run out of cash faster if prices don't improve dramatically in a short time." The National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) told Energy Intelligence that shutting down Gulf production would be a potential strategic mistake. “Not only would production sit idle, many of the companies along the Gulf Coast that keep energy flowing would disappear forever,” NOIA President Erik Milito said in a statement. “One does not simply turn off massive offshore platforms without upending our economy and energy security.” Offshore West Africa, few Nigerian producers can countenance the pain of cutting production. International oil companies present in the Opec country’s offshore sector have low production costs at their most deepwater operations. Closer to shore, shallow water production is usually operated as joint ventures (JVs) that include indigenous companies, in which Nigeria National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) holds majority stakes. According to an industry source, NNPC would resist allowing its JV partners to cut production because the government needs the money it gets from these oil projects. The few indigenous companies that have hedged at $45/bbl have no incentive to cut output, while those that are heavily indebted have to keep going to service the interest on their loans.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

There is little question about it: Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of MbS, has basically told the rest of OPEC to brave the world, each man for himself. And of course, the message to the US is that we can put down your entire shale industry. They used Russia as their pin the tail on the donkey. Putin hates that game.

In one fell swoop, Saudi Arabia made itself vulnerable to all the woes that can possibly assail an indigenous tribe. 

I'm not at all sure that Mr. Trump understands that a) we basically don't need their oil, b) he's at serious risk of losing Texas, c) more than a million worker's jobs can be saved in one stroke of his pen, or d) KSA and in particular MbS is not our friend. 

Mr. Trump likely has zero respect for Rick Perry, who has become the titular face for the American shale cohort. Harold Hamm is serious and well-informed but somehow always comes off as touting his own book. Scott Sheffield is a good spokesman but lashes out at others. That pretty well leaves Chevron and Exxon to advise the president, and they are both out to pick up the leavings of small shale players. 

I predict that not much will come of the meeting, that KSA and Putin still think cutting a million barrels a day is making a supreme sacrifice, and that the meeting will be sprinkled with tension and later regretted words. Only in that context might Mr. Trump just say the hell with it and slap a 25% tariff on Saudi oil. Actually, I think if it happens it will be on OPEC oil, which would be a mistake since we're going to want to drill off the coast of some of those countries.

"Houston" made a good point: the shale guys who didn't hedge are pretty much out of the business if this goes on much longer. But there's another group he didn't refer to: the inevitable bankruptcies who are preparing their ledgers. Like Whiting just did, some of them are going to draw down their revolver, stop drilling, build up a cash chest, and use this very low oil pricing environment as a platform for bankruptcy protection. They'll come out the other side with no debt and good holdings. In fact, I rather suspect that some of these guys are hoping for $10 oil, because bankruptcy protection is given by the court (or not) according to the financial situation of the immediate time.

I don't think MbS reckoned on any of this.