Tumble in oil prices will not kill shale industry, rather make it stronger - Fitch
Moscow/Sputnik/UNI: Dmitry Marinchenko, the head of natural resources and commodities at Fitch Ratings, told Sputnik on Monday that the currents oil market crash would not impact the shale industry, but rather make it stronger, as it was in 2015-2016, and when the prices rise again, shale mining will start to grow.
"At such low prices, shale oil producers will begin to reduce production, but it will only happen closer to the end of the year. It will not be possible to entirely kill the shale industry, low prices will only make it stronger, as in 2015-2016, and with rising prices, production will start to rise again," Marinchenko said.
He added that Russia could resume talks with OPEC+, but market participants will no longer take the agreement seriously.
Earlier on Monday, at 04:41 GMT, the price of May futures for the Brent Crude oil dropped by 28.69 percent — to $32.28 per barrel. The value of April futures for WTI crude oil decreased by 31.35 percent to $28.33 per barrel.
On Saturday, the spokesman for Azerbaijan’s state oil giant SOCAR, Ibrahim Ahmedov, told Sputnik that the OPEC+ group, which includes OPEC members and their allies, such as Azerbaijan and Russia, would likely return to talks on deeper output cuts. He added that some oil producers apparently wanted lower oil prices to put a damper on shale oil exporters.
The Saudi-led OPEC, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has had production cutting pacts since 2016 with non-member allies led by Russia.
The wider alliance, known as OPEC+, met in Vienna on Friday to discuss production cuts. After the talks, OPEC+ issued a statement saying it would continue consultations to stabilize the oil market, without mentioning any deeper cuts. Analysts said Russia’s hesitation to deepen production cuts was probably related to concerns that it would lose more market share to US shale oil drillers, who were not members of OPEC+ and were producing at record highs.
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