Will shrink supplies and probably boost prices
While several oil firms have signaled in recent weeks that they’ll pare their 2015 budgets, the resulting drop in production — which eventually will shrink supplies and probably boost prices — won’t occur until after those budget cutbacks are in place.
“Barring some sort of global event that could change things instantaneously, it’s really about somebody reducing production,” said Christopher Guith, senior vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.
Brent crude, the international standard, closed Wednesday at $79.82 per barrel, down $1.85. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was down 76 cents to $77.18 per barrel. It has fallen from a 2014 high of $107.26 on June 20.
It will take about six months for budget decisions made now to affect drilling activity, Guith said, so any slowdown “won’t show up until the second or third quarter of 2015.”
After that it could take six months to a year for lower production to have an effect on supplies and prices, said Marshall Adkins, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates.
All told, Adkins estimated, global prices could remain depressed for as long as two years before the market fully corrects itself.
Meanwhile, the industry continues to look toward the Nov. 27 meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which produces about 40 percent of the world’s oil.