A year after oil sank into a bear market, the industry is still hunkering down for a long period of low prices, with Europe’s biggest producer seeing only the first glimpses of a recovery.
In the last five months, US production sank by 590,000 barrels a day, or more than 6 percent. The bad news: Drillers are cutting costs with a speed and brutality not seen in decades, enabling many to continue producing at a high level even as prices remain low.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees crude falling by another $10 a barrel as storage tanks fill up in the coming months.
“I see the first mixed signs for recovery,” said Ben Van Beurden, Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s chief executive officer, speaking at the Oil & Money conference in London.
Strike Energy has suspended operations at the Southern Copper Basin Gas Project.
The firm temporarily shut down work on two of its wells as localised flooding hit the area.
