US Oil market gets ready for another slump as foreign competition and more advanced drilling tactics bring on hiring slumps – PB/TK
OPEC Took Aim at U.S. Oil Producers, but Hurt Itself, Too – By Clifford Krause / June 15 2017
HOUSTON — Picture a three-year-old tug of war waged across the globe that leaves both sides wobbly and scarred but unmoved. That’s one way of looking at the high-stakes competition between the world’s big oil exporters and the companies drilling in American shale fields.
The struggle for dominance of the 97-million-barrel-a-day global market has left a scorecard that few in the oil patch could have anticipated three years ago, when oil sold for over $100 a barrel — more than twice the current price, which is near 12-month lows. With the onset of the summer driving season, oil and gasoline prices should be rising, but they have fallen over the last two weeks as inventories of crude and refined products remain stubbornly high in the United States and abroad.
On one side of the rope is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Saudi-led group whose strategy for retaining market dominance has twirled from one failed tactic to another as it struggles to conquer a glut that will almost surely suppress prices for at least another year.
And on the other side are the companies still working at a frenzied pace to tap shale reserves in the United States, especially across Texas. They have survived the cartel’s attempts to kill off shale production, but they are limping from the depressed crude prices that make eking out a profit a daily struggle.
Continue to nytimes.com article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/energy-environment/gas-oil-petrol-opec.html?ref=business&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&_r=0
