Moody’s said as commodity prices continue to slide, the global oil and gas industry will reduce capital spending and work towards leaner budgets this year. The investor’s service said lower commodity prices have led to deterioration in cash flows and liquidity, which has strained the already limited financial flexibility of oil and gas companies.
Asia’s top commodity trader exits 2015 in very different shape to how it began the year. Noble Group Ltd. has lost almost two-thirds of its value, with its stock trading near the lowest since 2008, after a year of attacks on its finances by critics including the anonymous Iceberg Research and short-seller Muddy Waters LLC. The latest blow, amid a rout in raw materials, is the cut in its credit rating to junk by Moody’s Investors Service on concerns over its liquidity.
Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras, which slashed its five-year spending plan by 40% in June, will likely cut back further as growing debt costs, falling oil prices and a weak currency have already made the plan obsolete, two company sources have revealed.
More than a year after Mexico rewrote laws to give oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos the financial independence needed to compete with global peers like ExxonMobil, things aren’t looking good for the state-owned driller. With crude near a six-year low, output dropping and Moody’s Investors Service warning that it’s considering a cut to Pemex’s credit rating, investors are demanding a widening premium to own the company’s bonds instead of government notes. The extra yield they demand to hold the dollar debt from Pemex is at a six-month high of 1.1 percentage points.