100,000 men and women have left the oil and gas industry in the past 90 days, gone home without a job. Likely for good.
CEO's, however, are still kicking ass and trying to keep their names out of the press. 90:1 is the ratio of CEO compensation to employee pay...if you are still an employee.
Bloomberg reports the United States shale industry is $350 billion dollars in the hole after 13 years of going wide ass open.
Why are E&P CEO's being rewarded for THAT?
Wait, there's more: 70% of the shale oil companies on the list above applied for, and received, a payroll protection plan (PPP) handout from the US government...some over $2MM dollars in free money. They received that money and then many of them let their employees go anyway.
For me, after 50 years of hard, manual labor, taking enormous risks with my own money, seldom staying in debt very long...after having basically the same employees the past 35 years all the stuff I've described above about corporated CEO's makes me embarrassed to be in the oil industry. I never, repeat NEVER, asked the US government for anything. For me that would be an admission of failure.
One of the first things I learned as a operator was to always expect the worse, and be ready. We were; we saw the US shale oil industry oversupplying the world oil market in November 2019, again, we listened to Russia and OPEC getting pissed off about it, again, and we knew the price of oil was going down. We did not seen the virus thing coming but so what? We were ready for it anyway.
Stay out of debt and always have six months of operating capital on hand. Always. Have your plugging costs set aside, don't lie to yourself or to others about profitability. And don't ever pull the trigger on a well based on "hope" that prices will get better. Hope is not a plan. Some smart people taught me that over the years and I am forever grateful.
We're still standing.
Thank you. I needed that.